7:30am -- Godly Hours vs. Ungodly Hours

Wow. 5am definitely qualifies as an ungodly hour of the morning to be waking up at. *falls over* I'd go to sleep now but it's too cold!

Perhaps I should explain. You see, right now I am sitting in line at the Royal National Theatre at 7:15 in the morning. 5 (ish) was when I woke up. (Woke up, not got up--I'm lazy) Anyway, the reason we've gotten up this early is because we're trying to get tickets to see Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, parts I and II, which are based on 3 novels by the same person. Fortunately for us, both parts are being performed today, one at 2pm and the other at 7pm. We were informed yesterday that they kept back 30 tickets to sell on the day of the performances, but that the box office opened at 10am, and that people generally got there 2 or 3 hours before the ticket went on sale.  That means we needed to be there at 7. And get up at 6 or so. Earlier, if we both need to shower and/or want to eat. Anyway, so we're about 20th or 21st in line. A couple of people have gone around and asked how many people are getting His Dark Materials tickets and if they're getting one or two, and Ashley, Leslie and I are getting, it seems, the 26th, 27th, and 28th tickets available out of 30. That was close! Good thing most people were only getting one ticket. ^_^

Waiting in line is interesting. Cold, but interesting. There's a woman behind us from Texas who's lived in the UK for 8 years. I don't remember exactly what she's doing here, but she doesn't like grocery shopping in England. Apparently grocery shopping in America is nicer. Who knew? And she hadn't known all the years she was here that you could get tickets for sold out shows the day of. So, here she is now!

Ashley and Leah went to get coffee, and Michelle discovered that one of the bricks is loose in the pavement. We decided to play a trick on Ashley, so I wrote a note saying "Help, help! I'm trapped under this brick! Ashley, save me!" and we put it under the brick. When Ashley came back, we "found" the loose brick and had her see what was underneath. It was quality entertainment.  ...  Maybe you had to be there. Also, after Ashley put the brick back (she decided to put the note in her journal), we had Leslie write another note to put under the brick, but we didn't have any ziplock bags, let alone plastic anything. I hope someone finds it before the rain disintegrates it.

Did I mention that it was cold? It was really cold. Really really cold. I was glad I had my sweatjacket in addition to my coat.

Finally, it was 10:00 and we were allowed inside to queue up there.

11:00am -- BOOKS! (and Writing Between Two Eats)

When we finished getting our tickets and wandering about the bookshop (they have the script for the RSC production of Beauty and the Beast and the play version of Roald Dahl's The Twits!!!), we wandered outside, and found people setting up tables FULL of books! Yay! I love books! It was just like in New York where you've got tons of random stuff that people are selling, and some of it's even worth buying. Like that copy of the Kama Sutra that I got for my brother. Er...never mind about that, though. We stopped at the tables for a very short time and browsed, but we needed to get somewhere to work on our papers, which were to be written by hand, since we hadn't much access to computers and less to printers. I'd already finished mine but wanted to rewrite it, and Ashley had hers outlined and partially written. We ended up in a cafeteria-like place that had 2 Eats in it! (Should that have been written "Eat.s"?) But one of them wasn't opening until 11, and we were hungry, so we went to the Eat across the room and around the corner, and got ourselves sandwiches and noodles. I got a cold Thai noodle salad; it was good! It also had enough spice to make me start coughing when I first took a bite! Commendable. *nods decisively*

11:30am -- Speedwriting: a return to the Time Before Computers

Then we wrote. And wrote and wrote. I only had to rewrite my paper but (as usual) I ended up editing as I went, so it took longer than I expected. I got the important stuff rewritten, the stuff where the original draft had paragraphs in odd orders with arrows pointing everywhere, and whole sections crossed off. We ran out of time, though, so I couldn't recopy the rest of it and I had to turn in the original draft of the last couple pages with all its cross-outs and stuff. Still, such is the state of writing before the Bksp key. (Though my laptop has the word Backspace all written out.) In addition, because we'd begun running out of time, we had to run to the hotel and run back so we wouldn't be late. As it was, Leslie and I made it in time but Ashley had gone to the toilets (not washroom or restroom) so was a tad late. She'd read the books though, so she didn't miss anything much.

2:00pm -- Armoured Bears, Daemons and other Cool Stuff

Part I of Pullman's His Dark Materials was impressive! Not least because the stage they used was one of the coolest stages I've ever seen! And I'm not likely to see a stage like that again, because it's got what they call a drum revolve, which is a circular part of the stage in the middle that revolves, so that everything on that part of the stage goes around and around in a circle, but it also can be split down the middle, making two half-circle shapes, each of which can be raised and lowered and is hollow so you can set up whole ROOMS inside and have them ready to be brought up when needed instead of taking time to do a scene change! Another aspect of the stage that made things so magical was that outside of the inner revolve was an outer one, which could be operated independently of the other. There was a tower built into the inner revolve that could be raised and lowered as well. All in all, the possibilities offered by a stage like that are just tremendous! Other elements of the play that also really impressed me were the lighting, particularly for certain transitions, and the puppetry they used to portray the various animals and Daemons (spirit companions/souls of the humans from Lyra's world). The puppeteers were all dressed in black, and could be seen onstage with their puppets, like in Japanese bunraku performances. Sometimes the characters to whom the Daemons belonged took the puppets from the puppeteers and held them themselves, but the puppeteers also provided the Daemons' voices, so unless the Daemons had no more lines for that scene, the puppeteer would remain onstage.

Perhaps I should introduce the storyline a little for those who have not read Pullman's books. The His Dark Materials trilogy is about 12 year old Lyra Belacqua, who comes from a world where everyone has a personal Daemon that follows them around. The Daemons are their souls, and reside outside of their bodies. When humans from Lyra's world are children, their Daemons can change shape, and often do so, but when puberty comes along, the Daemons "settle," or choose one shape that they will remain in for the rest of their lives. Lyra journeys to the Arctic to rescue her friends and help the powerful Lord Asriel, her uncle, do research. But when Lyra, fleeing the Church and the mysterious child-kidnappers called Gobblers, discovers ways to journey to other worlds, she discovers new friends like Will Parry who'strying to find his father, John Parry, and new quests she--and Will--must complete first.

There were a few problems I had with the actual story, like the implication by the end that it's ok to torture children in the name of science, which is what Lord Asriel does in order to get into the other worlds. He must sever the bond between a child and his or her Daemon to create enough energy to open a portal to another world. The only thing is, he never really gets punished for it or seems to realize that what he did was bad! At least Mrs. Coulter, who ran the Gobblers organization, had a change of heart and realized that her "experiments" (which also involved severing children from their Daemons, which either killed them or made them go mad with shock) and the Church, which was sponsoring such experiments, were all evil and horrible and should be made to go away forever and ever. Or something like that. Still, I didn't like her by the end of the play, even if she did change and begin to hate the Church and its ruthlessness. She still seemed to me a bad mother (you'll have to read the books to find out why) even though she did prevent her own daughter from being "experimented" on.

The Church... ah, the Church. The Church was interesting. They seemed to represent the Catholic Church in this world in their "we have the only right ideas and anyone who does not believe in our ideals must be bad" ideals. Their costumes were, uh... laughable? No, seriously! They had these purple robes and skintight cowls with wacky collars that made them look like some villain out of a 50s science fiction TV show! Go Flash Gordon go! I totally expected Emperor Ming to come out and start ordering them around or something. The head of the Church, Father President, seemed to have a distinctly American accent to me, though a British guy in the audience said that it was supposed to be a Northern Irish accent. Wow... is that supposed to be a jab at the Northern Irish? I dunno... but it didn't sound like an Irish accent to me at all.

Anyway, it was a fabulous play overall, and they did a super job of it. After Part I was over, Ashley and Leslie and I went to have some dinner.

5:30pm -- Mmm, Turkey

We ate at the Turkish buffet. We'd eaten there once already, and were quite impressed, though we had a really hard time getting the waiter bringing us more water. Was it a conspiracy? Perhaps not, since when we met Michelle, Leah, Kim, and Sarah, who had all except Michelle seen Part I, there was no shortage of water. The food, as it was the last time, was absolutely delicious and only 5 pounds for all you can eat! There was a beef dish, and a chicken dish, and these fabulous triangular fila pastry things with cheese in the middle... mmmmm. Nothing was labeled, so I can't tell you what I ate except for the bread, hummus, and baklava, the names of which I already knew. Oh, and falafel. They had that, too.

We tried to explain what had happened in Part I to Michelle, but it was hard--SO much had happened! We decided she should just come see the show and pretend she knew what was going on.

7:00pm -- Why does the Authority matter, anyway?

We returned to the theatre early and found our seats. When it started, they did a recap of Part I (interesting for those of us who'd seen it) and then went into Part II. There was a whooole lot of religious symbolism, like Lyra's secret name being Eve, making her the bringer of Dust, or experience, or, if you want to call it that, sin, into the world. But in this case, and in my personal opinion, it seemed that Dust was GOOD for the world. If there was no Dust, there would be no creativity and people would just die of boredom and become almost spiritless! There was a lot of mention of this entity called the Authority, which seemed to be this world's version of God (the Judeo-Christian one). Lord Asriel was trying to kill him and the Church was trying to stop Lord Asriel, and the witch-clans of the North were trying to help Lord Asriel, and the angels were divided, some fighting for Lord Asriel and some for the Church. It was this giant epic battle, and somehow Lyra had gotten caught up in it. I'd say something else about the Authority, but it would totally give away an important part of the ending, so I won't. Lyra's best friend Will tried to save her and broke the knife that he'd won in a fight and that allows him to travel from world to world, but they get Iorek Byrnison, king of the armoured bears, to fix it for them. I love the deal Lyra makes with the Harpies to get out of the Land of the Dead! Speaking of them, by the way, the Harpies had FANTASTIC costumes! I want those wings! They were huge, and had wonderful elaborate "bone" structures! Even though they were black and were probably meant to be scary (and they were), I thought they were beautiful in their own way.

After that was over, we all kind of went back to the hotel to be in shock and contemplate the wonderfulness of the play. We had some pretty in depth discussions about the themes and the ideas of the play, but I don't suppose you want a dissertation here. What you DO want to do is go to London and see the play! Highly recommended!