(photo: ginny weasley( bonnie wright to non harry potter fans) and the very white and wintry emcee.)Thursday was another busy day, as most of my days seem to be... After class, my friend and i went to the marylebone high street lighting, about a 5 minute walk from our school. We arrived at 4, as the adverts stated, though we soon found out the actual lighting did not occur until 5:30. As the stagehands finished screwing on the last of the decorations for the set and setting up the lights, a brass quintet entertained us with some lovely christmas songs.
The man hosting the event was dressed all in white and had a shaved head. He was pretty cool looking as you can see in the photo. He announced the the entertainment of the evening, most of which consisted of choirs of schoolkids.
Lots of little school kids. Then there was a girl who sang "all i want for christmas is you" solo, a la love actually. She gave it a valiant try but she wasn't quite as good as the young girl in love actually. After her, some guy named david snedden (?) who won the original fame academy (?) played a few songs off his new cd. I think fame academy is some sort of early american idol/ pop idol/ singing competition. He was pretty good, but i dont actually know who he was.... He was quite scottish, though, which is always nice to hear.
Finally the special guest came on stage: bonnie wright who plays ginny weasley in the harry potter movies. She used a wand to guide the children in lighting the street. Their countdown wasnt quite coordinated and it took a little while to catch on to the fact that they were lighting them one chunk at a time, rather than the entire street at once. It looked very nice at t he end, and they finished it off with.......some fireworks! What else would they do? It's England, man. Fireworks are used to celebrate all events, ever. So they shot them off the roof of the stage. The host looked legitimately frightened when they first went off, which amused us. Though i tried not to laugh until he started making fun of himself. That's when you know its ok to laugh at someone. They followed up the fireworks with some fake snow. At first, i thought it was styrofoam, but it happened to be actual fake snow. I guess in case something caught fire they could put it out with a light dusting of manmade snow. Luckily it didn't come to that. Phew.
We went back to get some dinner, though we had planned on going to covent garden as well for their christmas lighting things, but the timing did not work out . That celebrity guest turned out to be baby spice of spice girls fame, emma something i think, so that was not a big loss. So after dinner and getting changed and all that, we decided to just go straight to our play, BENT.
My friend emme has a friend in the cast, so he put side 3 tickets for us at 15 pounds each. The man who handed them to us commented on how good they were: the 5th row right in the center. They were , in fact, superfantastic seats. I was particularly excited for this play because it was starring Alan Cumming (of cabaret fame; also boris "i am invincible" grishenko in goldeneye). He was absolutely unbelievable, and not just because i am a fan. He is talented. Emme's friend actually played Alan's boyfriend and had a rather big role; i had originally assumed he was a minor role, seeing as i don't understand how my friends can be friends with people quite so successful. But yes, he was fantastic as well. The play is not your average, everyday, happy - go -lucky musical; just the opposite actually. It focused on nazis, germany, and homosexuality... some themes that appeared in cabaret as well.
For the entirety of the second act, the actors mainly just move rocks back and forth from one side of the stage to other, as one does in a concentration camp. You'd think this would be dull, but it was riveting . That must get fairly ouchy after a while...which is why mr. cumming stretches for 20 minutes after every show ( as the usher told us) You see, we conducted what we thought was a thorough search of the surrounding area for anything that might look like a stage door. When we failed to find anything, and my friends all refused to ask anyone, i did something very out of character. I finally sucked it up and asked a lady who worked there. She explained the very out of the way location, said they usually come out, and didn't seem to think it was a preposterous idea. Therefore, i felt a little better even though my friends and i were only the ones waiting....creepy...i know. We stood there awkwardly as people came out of the stage door and we didn't say anything. Then we all almost missed alan cumming, but one of my friends recognized him under his hat and politely said "alan?" He stopped for us, and said something along the lines of "oh you'd like autographs?" in his lovely scottish brogue. He was kind enough to sign things and take photos even though he was in a hurry and the car was waiting right there. Not to mention he just carried rocks around for an hour. I don't know how they do it. Nice guy, though. Again, not very interested in hanging around, like tim curry, but i cant really blame them. I wouldn't want to talk to people every night, i know that much.
Fresh from our exciting celebrity encounter, we decided to use the nervous energy towards good. Seeing as this was the trafalgar theatre, only steps away from trafalgar square, we thought it was only proper to go try to climb on the lions at nelsons column in the dark at midnight. My friends were not sure how to go about doing it and didnt want to look silly, so i offered to try first. i am all about looking silly, which is good, since i have several unsuccessful attempts. In the end, two of my friends and i got on the same lion sculpture and took fun silly photos. If you plan on doing this at some point in your life, see to it that you wear sneakers, or shoes with any sort of traction. For i did not, and it was exponentially more difficult than it need to be. After conquering the lions, we walked down a bit to take photos of big ben at night. my friends decided to walk home, but i was a bit sleepy and decided that would not be the best idea. So i took the tube back and went to sleep.
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