From 'La Mole' to Penge

As you probably know, Adrian (london1952) has been attending an Italian evening class since last September.

Last night they had a class outing to the Globe Theatre



to see Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in Italian, as part of an international programme



37 plays, 37different languages

Roberta - the teacher - had some spare tickets and Adrian managed to talk me into going.

The evening for Adrian and myself started with an Italian meal at Zizzi's.
 
The restaurant is so close to Southwark Bridge you are almost under it

 


I had the Zizzi's platter of assorted 'affettati' for starter and Adrian bruschetta

 


followed by 'Penne alla Vodka' for me and Pizza 'Mezzo Mezzo' for Adrian (it should really be 'Mezza e Mezza' as pizza is feminine but hey  'gnocchi' was spelled without the 'h' on the menu)



We really enjoyed the meal although we were a bit pressed for time.

The Globe theatre is just round the corner. I made the lady that checked our tickets laugh when she asked "How's your Italian, gentlemen?" and I replied "Mine's excellent"!

Watching a play at the Globe is certainly an experience.
It's a circular theatre and the centre is opened to the elements: with impeccable timing, it started raining just before the play started and stopped when it finished.
Not that we had to worry as we were not standing in the pit but sitting on the benches in the gallery





But please don't think we had it easy. The benches - even with cushions - were hard and halfway through the first half we were shuffling in out seats, trying to find a position that didn't hurt our backs.
Adrian was in pain and he said that he thought he was going to pass out.
Of course, as we didn't want to disturb the people sitting next to us, we waited until finally the interval came.

By then quite a few people had left. Was it the rain for the standing audience? Was is the benches for the people in the gallery? Or did they find it hard to follow the play in Italian? Or was it *gasp* the performance itself?

I say it was the performance. Adrian gave it a score of 1 out 10 (and I believe that the 1 point was gained by sending out Mark Anthony in jeans that showed quite a bulge!).

How can I describe it?
Well, imagine your Romans clad in sunglasses, jeans and leatherette coats with tails, the scenery made up of a broken chair, and of 3 wooden doors on castors moved around the stage the whole time, the bier 'built' with two plastic dustbins with another bloody door on top.

Picture the actors rolling and prancing about on the stage, putting light bulbs in their mouths, jumping up the doors and climbing on top of each other and even inside the dustbins. 


Come back for more?  What? Are you NUTS?

In the interval we decided that we were going to stay as long as we could move to the row behind (some people had left by then) where it was possible to rest our backs against the wall.
And so we did, and sat through another hour of this modern, self-indulgent monstrosity.

The performance was certainly very energetic but it failed to draw me in.
I couldn't really care about what was supposed to happen to the characters (you had to use your imagination - Caesar was stabbed by drawing red lines in crayon on the chair; Cassius was killed by a soldier who perched on his shoulders and rubbed red dye on his bald head).

Yes there was applause and even cheers at the end. Was it relief? Or perhaps politeness? Or maybe it was friends and relatives?

I for one was very relieved when we left and went back to normality, whatever that may be.