London town, part IV: Elizabethan Shakespeare and a Grand Orchestra

THE TEMPEST
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
May 22, 1 pm

Curtain call for The Tempest.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a company that performs in a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original, Elizabethan-era Globe Theatre. They perform it in period style as well - that is, on a bare stage and sometimes with men performing the female roles. So the spectacle of the theatre and the staging is often interesting in and of itself, but the production was also very fun to watch. The three actors alternated the roles in the production, including the female ones, and it was all very well performed and staged.

The Globe.

The building itself is fun to visit. The stalls area is all standing room, and it's only 5 pounds per ticket. Cheap and standing was the way it was during Elizabethan times as well, while the aristocracy got to sit down in the galleries along the side. Apparently, it was quite raucous in the standing stalls back then as well; nowadays patrons stand quietly. Being an outdoor theatre, the place is subject to all the strange sounds of modern life. Jet planes whizzed by overhead (the theatre is in the flight path for London Heathrow airport) and the occasional siren could also be heard. Despite the modern world's inevitable intrusions, it was very interesting to see theatre in the 'old' style.

LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Barbican Hall
May 22, 7:30 pm

The behemoth among the London orchestras (and the world’s “most recorded orchestra,” according to the program) is a thrill to hear. In a great program conducted by Antonio Pappano, who in his other capacity serves as the much-lauded music director of the Royal Opera House, the orchestra brilliantly performed some fascinating repertoire. Bernstein’s Suite from On the Waterfront was a film score excerpt that had both tranquility and drama. Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto played with rhythm and sound in a very fascinating way – Han-Na Chang played the cello wonderfully, and recovered from having one of her strings snap in the middle of a very difficult cadenza. Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony was gorgeous. Very much a joy to be hearing a truly great orchestra after not having been to the symphony for a very long time (because the LA Phil is so expensive and difficult to get into).

The London Symphony performs at Barbican Hall, which is in the middle of the Barbican Complex, a strange modernistic collection of residential, office and cultural buildings. It's constructed in a 70s concrete aesthetic, and it's a maze of a place. There are lakes and hanging gardens and imposing looking concrete structures that line the lakes. It all looks like something out of the Jetsons. The above picture doesn't capture it all very well, but at least you get a sense of the many concrete walls in the complex.