A Week at the Theatre!!! (yes, spelled the British way)

First night out to "Billy Elliot" last week!

In front of the Victoria Palace Theatre where "Billy Elliot" has been playing since March of 2005.

This week on Tuesday we went to "Wicked" at the Apollo Victoria Theatre (right across the way from where "Billy Elliot" was). It has been playing there since Sept. 2006.

The set for "Wicked"

Follow the yellow brick road!

Posters in Leicester Square (might recognize these from the post of my photography social...)

Dominion Theatre where "We Will Rock You" has been playing for nearly 9 years (literally right outside of the Tottenham Court Rd. tube station).

So for the past week, Mom and I have been trying to fit in all of the West End (what London calls their version of Broadway) shows we can! If you go to Leicester Square the day of the play, or a few days in advance, the theaters start to release discounted tickets (sometimes up to 50% off) that they know they won't be able to sell at full price before the show. It makes the theater affordable even for some great seats in the stalls and dress circle!

Starting with Billy Elliot (you may remember the movie) which is the story of a 12 year old boy who starts going to ballet class instead of his boxing classes in the hard times of the 1980's in Durham, England. He falls in love with dancing (and happens to be pretty good), and has to convince his dad and brother of his talent so he can audition for the Royal Ballet School instead of going into the dangerous and un-lucrative mining business they are in. As it takes place in a time where miners were losing their lives and rights while on strike, he had to overcome some very strong issues (of course!). It was hilarious and a little sad too! AWESOME!

Next, we saw Wicked which is based on the best selling novel written after The Wizard of Oz which acts as a sort of prequel telling the story of Glinda (who goes on to be the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz) and Elphaba (who goes on to be the Wicked Witch of the West that Dorothy runs from in the Wizard of Oz). Glinda and Elphaba meet in sorcery school, and Elphaba being born green, has to overcome some adversities to fit in. It portrays the witches in different lights than the Wizard of Oz and was great despite our sub-par tickets (as it is currently the most popular show in the West End and this is apparently mid-term week where all the kids have off of school like Spring Break, tickets were hard to come by)! Besides, I already knew the popular "Defying Gravity" song thanks to Glee which made it more fun to sing along with.

Last night we went to see "We Will Rock You" which to be honest, we were a little wary of because the story takes place in 2310 and sounded pretty strange. Earth as we know it no longer exists, and kids are all forced to dress the same, learn the same songs, watch the same t.v. shows, so they are all brainwashed in order to follow orders from the Killer Queen. A group of rebels (one being called Meat-after Meatloaf and one being called Brit after Britney Spears), have found old magazines and posters referring to popular music and rock 'n' roll, and know that in order to release the kids from their brainwashed states, they must find the only musical instrument still hidden on the planet-once belonging to Queen front-man Freddie Mercury. So weird, right? Right. Well the show was basically all music, very little dialogue other than through songs, and the play is based on songs from Queen. Of course Galileo and Scaramouche, the main characters (hmm...sound familiar), find the guitar (buried at was once Wembley Stadium) and the rebels become the Champions. With songs like "Another One Bites the Dust", "We Will Rock You", "We Are the Champions", "Bohemian Rhapsody", and about 12 more popular songs, I actually thought it was pretty awesome (surprise to me too!). The dancing and singing made the weird story well worth it. Plus, all of the subtle references to popular and present artists/issues made it pretty funny! Was possibly my seond favorite show after Billy Elliot, but really, they were all spectacular shows!!

All in all, I am so glad I've gotten to see some West End shows and will hopefully see at least one more before I go! I will miss half-priced musicals back in Houston :(

A Touristy Day Indeed!

Start the day out with the London Eye!

County Hall and the Eye

I like lamps.

And tube signs. or really, just any signs!

Big Ben-check out the scaffolding behind it. Scaffolding ruins everything!

Protestrors protesting the war in front of Parliament

The sign says it all! (I think that's St. Margaret's Church there too)

Parliament

It's a rather large place...

Back of Westminster Abbey-I think?

Flying butresses!

Parliament again-with a lightpost!

Still Parliament...

One last shot of Ben

I believe this is Westminster Abbey. I've confused myself now though with St. Margaret's Church...It's like 1 a.m. here. I'm sleepy!

Definitely Westminster Abbey

I like the contrast of the old and new

Neat little clock-not quite as tall as Big Ben though

I want to see this play!

Kind of reminds me of an armadillo. no?

Not sure what this is, but in the middle of all of the ultra-modern glass curtain wall skyscrapers, it seemed not to fit-I like that.

Loved the look of this cute pub! Right in the middle of these super tall office buildings!

Victoria Station-good to know what it looks like. Might have to take a train from here one of these days!

I like street signs...

Lower Sloane Street-the whole street is lined with these red flats

So this day started out strange indeed. A very traumatic event happened when I was walking on my way to the tube station, but I won't write about it because it tends to tug at the heart strings a bit. So I made my way to Waterloo tube station because I had seen in the paper the day before that Anne Hathaway was filming a scene outside of Waterloo Station for a new movie. Well, they didn't seem to be filming anymore (always a day late-first Jennifer Aniston, now Anne Hathaway!), but then again, the train station (it also has a large national rail station attached) was huge, and for me to walk around to all parts of it would probably have been very difficult. From Waterloo, I walked to the London Eye. There seemed to be a lot more street perfomers there than I remembered (and tons more people). I saw another Jack Sparrow impersonator which may or may not have been the same one I saw at Covent Garden and a bad Michael Jackson impersonator (he looked nothing like MJ and I think everyone though it was in poor taste as he had no one around him). From the Lonodn Eye, I walked across Westminster Bridge to Parliament, Big Ben, and eventually Westminster Abbey.

I ended up on Victoria Street and mom and dad had told me of a travel agency just off of Victoria St. that I should visit to discuss our trip. It was quite a ways down, but I finally found it, and she gave some great advice-like going to Greece in October is not a good idea.

From here, I was still going strong, and decided to walk to Sloane Square. Once I finally got there, I actually felt pretty tired, and decided to get the 137 bus back to Bob's. Unfortunately, there was some malfunction on the bus, and it instead of dropping us off at Bob's Street (well not us-not everyone woudl have gotten off there), it terminated at Clapham Common Station. So I decided to finish off my day by doing the 30 minute walk to Bob's, and stopping in Tesco's to get some dinner. Is it sad that the express checker guy now knows me?haha