This Saturday morning, bright and early, I donned my best corduroy and set out to London’s empty streets to catch the tube to London Bridge, where I would thus be whisked away to the southern coast of England on a tour of the Seven Sisters Cliffs and the surrounding countryside. I booked this tour through TripAdvisor by Brighton & Beyond Tours, and it was the best £92 I’ve ever spent, and if you’d entertain me for just a while I’d like to tell you why. After about an hour's ride, we arrived at the Brighton Train Station. When I got to the tour van I was notified, in front of the entire 15-person group, of the fact that I had in actuality booked my tour for Saturday, April 30th, not the 9th. I took several moments to feel very silly with a side of panic before blessed Lawrence, the guide, assured me that it was my lucky day, for there was exactly one extra seat left and that I could come along anyhow. I really must be some sort of idiot. I sat. Our first stop was the Chalk Downs, which I felt was a very incongruous name due to the fact that we were very much up. We parked atop a towering hill overlooking surrounding greenery and farmland and got out to explore. The hill was so towering, in fact, that there were dozens and dozens of paragliders, all geared up and everything, breaking into sprints left and right and jumping off the edge into windy oblivion. They circled above us like technicolor prey birds as Lawrence informed us of the etymology of the Chalk Downs’ name (derived from Ye Olde English word “dun,” meaning “hill”), told some old folktales about the Devil’s Dyke nearby (old lady made a bet with the devil and tricked him, go her), how the several meters’ worth of chalk beneath our feet were formed (something about the Ice Age and plankton), and the fact that an overwhelming percentage of the world’s chalk is mined from this very area. Neat! We then stopped at Middle Farm for lunch. All of us were provided a free hot drink voucher and one hour to explore. Here, I got a delicious cheese and homemade chili jam sandwich and a cappuccino, practiced self-control in the grocery market, practiced zero self-control in the booze market where I purchased a bottle of honey mead – very medieval of me – and pet a cow who tried to eat my jacket in return. It was glorious. Our first viewpoint stop was the Beachy Head Cliffs, which granted us sprawling views of the English Channel and the cartoonishly adorable Beachy Head Lighthouse, its towering 141-foot height dwarfed by the majestic white cliffs upon which we stood. I was rendered speechless by this sight; the Channel was bright blue, reflecting the cloudless sky, and the chalk cliffs were a bright gleaming white. It was unreal. I couldn’t believe I was in England; I felt like sights like these were reserved for Croatia, or Greece, or something. We then ventured out into the countryside to our next viewing point, driving through tiny villages with thatched-roof cottages situated between rolling hills alongside the River Cuckmere. Lawrence played us a few classical pieces inspired by the south Sussex countryside from a composer I can’t remember the name of, and if I squinted my eyes and believed, I could pretend I was in Lord of the Rings. He showed us some carvings into the sides of the Downs, the earth and greenery removed by ancient hands to reveal the white chalk underneath: the Litlington White Horse, carved to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation, and the Long Man of Wilmington, with mysterious origins due to some headstrong priest’s mission to restore it a couple centuries ago, thus erasing all archeological evidence that could have possibly been used to date it. We drove through several pastures, and since springtime was afoot all of the usual suspects – sheep, cows – were accompanied by smaller, cuter versions of themselves, and many an “awwww” and “oh my Gooooooood” were heard about the cabin as we trundled on. Our penultimate viewpoint was the most well-known and thusly crowded one: the Birling Gap. A low point right in the middle of the Seven Sisters, there is a short metal staircase that you can take down to the rocky beach. We were allotted an hour to do our worst. Immediately, I went down the stairs to dip my fingertips in the chilly water, climb the chalky outcrops, and select a rock to bring home with me. I limited myself to just one, because I knew if I didn’t that I would have to lug home a particularly heavy tote bag, which would then translate to a particularly heavy checked bag when I inevitably have to fly back over the ocean. As I walked along the beach, I noticed that the rocks below my feet made a light clinking sound as they rubbed together that sounded quite lovely, like windchimes. I grabbed a bit of chalk from the cliff and wrote my initials and more than a few smiley faces on some rocks. I spent an extensive amount of time trying to pick the perfect rock, with an adequate proportion of chalk to flint and some distinctive feature that sparked particular joy. I went through a few of varying sizes, with fun little swiss cheese holes and cow spots of chalk, before I spotted one that stole the show: a small one, no larger than my palm, multicolored and imprinted with a partial fossil of what looked like a clam shell. It was everything to me. Into the pocket it went. I traipsed back to the van with my precious finding and off we went. Our last stop along the cliffs was one Lawrence revered as the absolute best place to view all Seven of the Sisters in all their miles and miles of sea-eroded chalky glory, and he was right. We arrived at Cuckmere Haven and parked the van next to a sheep pasture, where we watched lambs frolic Bambi and Faline-like, half hiding behind their mothers and half play-kicking at each other, through the wispy grass for a while. Lawrence pointed out a forest on the horizon, so distant I could barely make it out: the Ashdown Forest, better known as the inspiration behind the Hundred Acre Wood, where A.A. Milne's son Christopher Robin used to roam about, playing pretend. I cried a little. Sue me. We walked some distance along a wide grassy trail and down a long staircase to yet another rocky beach, this time with some A- boulders to climb: I give them a A- only because many of them were covered by sea-slimy moss, which made climbing them a tad more challenging, but I did it anyway. Triumphantly, I sat atop one of them, the wind off the water blowing my hair anywhither, the sun warm on my face, and stared at the distant rises in the cliffs, counting all seven. Seeing this felt very important, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I just stared and stared.
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The Merchant of Venice, reimagined and reclaimed by Abigail Graham, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is a meditation on the true cruelty underlying Shakespeare’s original script. Interspersed with bouts of absurdity and tension-breaking comedic moments, namely just about every scene that Sophie Melville’s Portia is in, the drunken Black Eyed Peas dance parties and the cell phone bit thrown in towards the end, the play is altogether harrowing.
Walking into the Wanamaker Playhouse for the first time was a surprise. It is an incredibly atmospheric space; four candelabras hang from the ceiling, casting a warm flickering light about the space. The – well, to put it nicely, coziness of it all transports one back in time, especially alongside the elegantly trimmed and painted ceilings, the background a light sky blue to pay homage to the open-air amphitheaters of ancient Greece and replete with cherubs and clouds and the like. Tall people like myself are at an unfortunate disadvantage in this theater and will have to ascertain a peculiar seating position so as not to knee fellow audience members in the back of the head while at the same time appeasing the universal aching tall person back, which operates under an omnipresent hunch. All this serves as a contrast to the stage itself, with a metallic, sort of industrial-looking back wall with ornate wooden castle doors and ladder rungs leading up to the vaulted orchestra pit, a contrast which reflects the incongruity between the time period in which this version of The Merchant of Venice is set and the time in which the text was actually written. Speaking of the orchestra pit, the band served as an incredible accompaniment to the show. There were more instruments than there were musicians, but they killed it nonetheless. During more intense scenes, such as standoff staredowns between Shylock and Antonio and his posse, the percussionist created a drumbeat so barely-there and rumbling it was imperceivable to the audience; only when the tension in the scene finally broke and the beat ceased could one realize it was even there, the silence shocking and empty. Modern Shakespearean takes are, I feel, very difficult to pull off. There is no right way to do it, no matter the amount of offbeat references and gags thrown in. While this may be rather more revealing of my own ignorance, I did find myself, at times, zoning out during this play due to my lack of understanding of Ye Olde Englishe. This was particularly common during interactions between those in the Antonio posse. They all felt like the same type of person, and they all talked, laughed, gesticulated, and drank extensively; I felt as though I would miss nothing if I stared into space for a while. The more time that happens between that of Shakespeare’s and ours creates more inaccessibility for his stories in modern audiences, who feel that they can’t fully connect to the events on stage because it’s impossible to understand what they are hearing. As Shylock, Adrian Schiller is captivating. Unassuming in his plain white shirt, black tie, briefcase, and brilliantly mundane stainless steel travel mug, he first appears as a humble businessman. But as Antonio and his weird rowdy frat boy henchmen begin to interact with Shylock, spitting on him and otherwise ignoring his humanity, a deeply anti-Semitic society is revealed and the once grandfatherly hunch to Shylock’s shoulders takes on a different sort of weight entirely separate from his age. “If they prick us, do we not bleed?” Shylock wails between sobs in his soliloquy that ends the first act upon learning that his daughter, Jessica, stole his valuables and abandoned him and her Jewish identity to marry Christian asshole Lorenzo. At this point everyone that has been on stage has disrespected and/or abandoned Shylock on account of his religion and his resulting position in society. Dogged and harassed, he is completely alone on a darkened stage, crying out unto the audience, ourselves acting as his sole companions in this desperate moment. In this final scene before the play’s intermission, we see an entirely new side to the soft spoken, almost rigid Shylock we see around his Christian counterparts. Here, we see his rage and his helplessness, his voice rising, straining, and breaking with emotion. “The villainy you teach me, I will execute,” he spits, addressing the cruelty he has tolerated from the Christians and bitterly wishing to inflict the same pain he has borne. As the stage finally darkens around him and the silence stretches poignantly, the quiet broken only by the doors opening to signal the beginning of intermission, we trudge into the brightness outside feeling wrung out. Alfies Antique Market was incredible, labyrinthian as it was, with what either had to be or otherwise felt like hundreds of elderly vendors selling vintage perfumes, taxidermied rats, fur coats, velvet couches, ornate writing desks, gleaming silver dinnerware, centuries-old prints of birds and plants and whatever, Cruella de Vil-style cigarette holders, rows upon rows of rings, gold and silver and gemstone and the like, and a frankly appalling number of items more. Picture how an antique shop or market might look back in the States – one room, maybe ten vendors, overflowing with goods and also always in the middle of nowhere, at least that’s my experience – and multiply it by about fifty, all in one very large and very old creaky building with an elusive number of floors in an immensely confusing layout, and place all that in the middle of London. Plus, throw in a rooftop cafe and, bizarrely, a koi pond in a stairwell. Madison at one point remarked, “I am going to have nightmares about this place.” I replied, “I would live here. Do you think I could just live here? I want to live here.”
We were only allowed an hour to explore before meeting up again to leave, which was more than enough time to lose what little sense of direction I might have previously had and, shock of all shocks, befriend a stranger. One of my many fervent obsessions is colored glass; over my many years of haunting thrift stores and estate sales I have accrued a meager collection of mismatched colored glass pieces, from a blood red tea set to an amber goblet to a bottle green mason jar, and doing so fills me with such overwhelming joy that whenever I peruse my little friends on my bookshelf at home I sometimes clutch my chest as if to put a stopper on the overflow of adoration, to somehow cope with the extremity of my feelings towards these inanimate objects. This is not an exaggeration; if you don’t have something in your life that makes you as uncomplicatedly happy as colored glass makes me, then you’d do well to find yourself something like it. Anywho, back to Alfies Antique Market. On what I’d guess was the basement floor but just as easily could have been the third one, I met a short, bespectacled, scruffy-browed man who had the most stunning and extensive collection of colored glass pieces I have ever seen. I stood there processing visual input for a good twenty seconds, feeling too shy to say something to the man but not shy enough to leave because I was literally staring my dream in the face, until he acknowledged me with a, “Are you keen on my collection?” “Yes, I mean, wow. This is amazing.” “Well, thank you.” “I sort of – collect colored glass, and this is, I mean. Wow. I love everything.” “Sort of collect? You either do, or you don’t.” He laughed. It was a scratchy, warm sound. “I do. I guess – yeah,” I laughed too, probably in a much less charming way than he did and more of a what-the-fuck-why-is-this-girl-rubbing-her-hands-together-like-a-manic-Bond-villian kind of way, battling every instinct in my brain telling me to scurry away because I’m embarrassing myself by speaking and I keep tripping over my words and ugh. This was a good thing that was happening. I could talk to this kind man about a passion we shared. Plus, I had a million questions. We proceeded to talk about:
We talked for around ten minutes: I kept asking questions, he kept showing me pieces from his collection, and I kept reacting in a way that could only be described as frantic yet genuine positivity. I eventually felt I had to say goodbye as it was nearing the hour mark and I knew I needed the extra time to wayfind. Plus, I knew that ultimately I wasn’t going to buy anything that day, and I didn’t want to string him along. I left, he told me to be careful on the stairs. It was all very nice. As I ascended, analyzing every moment of the conversation for reasons to be embarrassed, I realized I never asked the glass man his name. I felt terrible about this and resolved to go back at some point. It’s been almost a week and I haven’t been back yet, but I will, and I will buy myself some colored glass to coo at like a whack job. |