Thursday -- Today, we set off for the British Museum and to see Lord of the Rings in London. What a fun day! I absolutely LOVE the British Museum -- all kinds of historical and archaeological artifacts that are crazy famous....we only had 2 hours, though, which is kind of a laughable amount of time to take in everything. You just can't, so you scurry about to all the most famous things that you can smoosh into that amount of time. I hung out with one of the other teachers and an Oxford grad student from the Philippines, and we zipped all over the place.
We went to the Rosetta Stone (my very, very favorite thing in the museum -- it was the breakthrough find that helped crack the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics), some Parthenon marbles that the British took from the French when they beat them in war, some carved Assyrian winged beasts, artifacts and carvings from Nineveh (yup, the same one that's in the Bible!), Egyptian mummies (some of the coolest ones I've ever seen -- I thought they might just wake up and start walking around, they were so well preserved!), African masks, the remains of an old Anglo-Saxon ship that were buried in the ground, an Easter Island statue (you know, the giant stone heads), and a giant Buddha. We were literally running everywhere we went! But it was amazing.
Then, we took a 15-minute walk down to the Royal Theatre on Drury Lane (I was looking for the Muffin Man....I don't think he lives there anymore.). I'm not sure if I can possibly describe Lord of the Rings, but I'll try. The hobbits were adorable, dancing around with fireflies in the background. Their music was cheery, almost Irish sounding. When the elves sang, it was more mournful, Celtic music. Aragorn (my favorite) played a lot smaller part in the musical (I don't think he's the singing and dancing type), and there was no Rohan, no Eowyn. I guess they couldn't include EVERYTHING from the whole trilogy -- it was already 3+ hours long. Gollum was fantastic -- he was the perfect dual personality. He climbed down the set like Spiderman, and crawled and fell and convulsed and galloped all over the stage (if you haven't seen or read LOTR, that's how he's supposed to act). He would switch back and forth between his 2 personalities 10 times in a minute -- jumping up and falling down each time he switched. And he was convincing in both. That man must have been TIRED after each performance. The orcs galloped all over the stage with what looked like crutches or braces for arms -- one even bounced and did flips all over the stage. When Bilbo Baggins puts on the ring at the beginning, you literally watch him disappear from sight -- you could hear an audible gasp in the room. BUT, the MOST audible gasp came when Gollum led Frodo and Sam into the tunnel -- you know, the one with the giant spider??? Um, yep, they definitely had a giant, realistic spider that took up the entire stage (operated by 8 people) appear out of the smoke, and my jaw literally dropped. You could hear all of the students saying, "No way!!!" The Ents walked on at least 10-ft. tall stilts, and the ring wraiths, on their horses, were walking on stilts as well (and they were SCARY looking!) The Mt. Doom scene was crazy -- they created a volcano on the set that Gollum fell into....argh....but I can' t describe it. If it comes to the U.S., you just need to go see it!
It's difficult to make an epic trilogy into a musical, so of course, it wasn' t perfect. If you go see it, you need to have read the book or seen the movie to understand what's going on. The singing wasn't always perfect (but what can you expect from a hobbit? It was kind of cute!). And I totally couldn't understand the Ents when they spoke, but overall, it was a BRILLIANT performance.
Other than that, the only thing else from Thursday was that I saw a lot of funny signs in London.
1) The Ivy House -- "Traditional English pub. Authentic Thai cuisine." -- HUH???
2) "Sofas and Sofabeds: Highly Sprung" -- I just don't know what to say about that.....how about "really comfortable," "great recliner," or "modern look, easy to clean"?
3) Pepsi bottlecap -- "Open by hand." -- Awwwww, dang it. I wanted to open it with my toes.
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