So, in the last few weeks, I have been a busy girl, and once tomorrow roles around, I will have exactly one month left in the UK. Crazy! I am, admittedly, very homesick, but have still been having wonderful experiences nonetheless and trying to utilize all my time left here before I fly back to the US. For the sake of time (and the fact that I am using this post to procrastinate internship work,) I will recap two of the highlights I've experienced since my last post. They are both represented in the title of the post: Gatz, and Oxford.
As some of you sit there, scratching your heads, and wondering where the hell Gatz, England is, (since I hope you all know that Oxford is a smaller city located about an hour from London in the English countryside) let me comfort you by saying: it isn't a city! It is the longest piece of theatre I have ever seen in my life. How long? 6 1/2 hours. Yeah. That's right. There was a reason why I bolded that. Gatz was a play put on by the Elevator Repair Service (theatre company from the US) here in London that is not just loosely based on the Great Gatsby, it is a play in which every single word of the Great Gatsby is read aloud by an actor who functions as the narrator of the actions on stage, as well as the narrator of the text, Nick Carraway. The Great Gatsby has always been right up there when it comes to my all-time favorite American novels, and might be right behind Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as my all-time favorite novels, period. I had never heard of a theatrical piece that stayed so close to literature that it was based on, and since I figured it took me only about 2 hours, if that, to get through Gatsby, that the show would be a captivating, creative take on a book that I had read religiously and loved faithfully.The play didn't jump right into the storyline of Gatsby, however: it began with a man walking into a dingy, scummy office, realizing his computer was broken, and seeing a ratty copy of the book on his desk, he begins to read it. As he does, the people working in the office with him start to become characters in the text, until the entire office and its employees are the set and characters of Fitzgerald's novel. It was an interesting transition to make, and the house was packing. I sat up in the third balcony (nosebleed) and paid thirty-seven pounds for them (currency) which equates to about fifty USD. The first act was 2 hours, followed by a 15 minute break, then the second act was an hour and fifteen minutes, 15 minute break, third act was the same (hour and fifteen minutes), followed by an hour and a half dinner break, and then we returned to the theatre for acts four and five, which were an hour and a half each. We arrived at the theatre at 2, curtain went up at 2:30, and we left at 10:45. It was a long day, and I think I've had my fill of Gatsby for a while.
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| This is a picture of the Quad of Brasenose College. It is one of the thirty-eight colleges that comprise Oxford University, and I spied this beautiful green space through a wooden gateway- one of the coolest discoveries of the day! |
The second noteworthy thing I've been up to was a day trip that I took to Oxford last weekend. Since London doesn't really have much "British" culture, because it is such a major city in Europe and has become so multicultural that it doesn't feel much different from New York, we decided to go and search for some lovely Britishness that we were all craving. We ended up deciding on going to Oxford, which is the third most expensive city in England, following London and Cambridge. Oxford was really exceptional, full of cobblestone streets, ancient churches, thick accents, and...colleges. Oxford, England, is home to (you guessed it, smartypants!) Oxford University, which is not really like our American universities. Oxford University is actually made up of thirty-eight different collages that are scattered all over the city of Oxford, and when you get your diploma at the end of four years, you receive it from the University, not the college you attended.
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| Outside of Christ Church |
Oxford is also home to two other relatively famous: (and by that I mean the average layperson has actually heard of these two things) Christ Church, and Alice's Shop. Christ Church is an exceptionally large and beautiful church in the heart of Oxford, and is said to be one of the most beautiful churches in England. By the time we got there on Saturday, rain was threatening (shockingly), it was getting late in the afternoon, there was a tremendously long line to go in and visitors were charged six quid (aka pounds) to enter, so we opted to enjoy the view from outside.
This beautiful city also boasts of the fact that it was the place where Lewis Carroll lived (LC is actually a pen name, the actual name of the author was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) and wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and it's sequel, Through the Looking-Glass. Carroll was actually a mathematician, and wrote the first story for a colleague's daughter, whose name was Alice Liddell. One of the stories that I've heard regarding Carroll's popular story and stranger personality was about a letter that he received from Queen Victoria. The Queen wrote to him, exclaiming how much she loved his first book, and asking him to send her more of his writing. So, he sent her a recently published piece on some crazy form of Algebra- I'm sure that's not what she was thinking of, but I like that story nonetheless. Although Carroll died in 1898, Alice's Shop still stands today in Oxford as a testament to the fantastical story that Carroll created there, that is still read by millions around the world today. Alice's Shop is small and very crowded, and you are sure to find any Alice in Wonderland paraphernalia within its walls. The actual shop is where Alice Liddell used to go to buy barley candy as a young girl (a hard British sugar candy). Although it is a good experience to venture into the store once if you happen to be in Oxford, it is not an experience that I believe to be worth repeating, as you are perpetually squeezing between the fifty other people there who wanted to pop into the small shop.
That's it for now- please stay tuned to hear about my adventures this weekend, which hopefully will include a visit to the Tower of London! Cheers!
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