An Unforgettable Summer: On Avenue Q

5/25/10
Location: London, UK

First full day in London today and I loved every minute of it! We’re in London for almost four days, but there is more to do here than any of the other stops on our world tour so we have to fit in all of the “absolutely must-sees.” We started off the day at the British Museum. My initial thought was “Museum? Eh…” I am 100 percent for the acquirement of knowledge and I think museums definitely are made for that, but I always seem to learn more and have more fun when I am actively doing things rather than passively reading little captions about ancient objects. But, I was proved wrong, as I have been a few times on this trip! The British Museum is enormous; its collections have more than 7 million objects. Not everything is on display of course, but there are still over 90 rooms full of incredibly pieces. There's not enough time to see everything, but by utilizing the museum map, you can easily pick the exhibits you are most interested in.

Secondly, the British Museum has so many fascinating objects, some of which no other museums in the world have. For example, I mentioned that we saw a copy of the Rosetta stone at the Egyptian Museum, but the British Museum has the real deal! They also hold more ancient Egyptian possessions than anywhere in the world besides the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It surprised me that they had so much and they had many things that I’m sure the Egyptian Museum would love to have and probably have a right to have, such as the Rosetta Stone, the mummy of Cleopatra, and the beard that fell from the Great Sphinx. Sure enough, after looking up the British Museum online after our visit, all of those items and more are hotly contested. The British Museum has claimed that “restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world" and also references their 1963 act that states that no object may leave the museum after entering it. While I can see their point that if they gave up everything that was made in another country that they would only be left with English items, some things of high importance and value to a particular country should be returned to them, like the Rosetta stone to Egypt and the Elgin marbles to Greece.

The British Museum has exhibits on every area of the world, spanning every era of human existence (the Americas, Europe, China, Japan, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Assyria…), as well as special exhibits, such as Enlightenment, Living and Dying, Money, Clocks, and so on. All of these exhibits surround the Great Court, which is a stunning circle with cafes and the museum shops with a glass ceiling that lets the natural light hit all of the granite and white columns. The British Museum also clearly has a great deal of funding from its trustees, and everything in the museum has print information on a metal plaque or cream-colored card and all of the important artifacts are on pedestals or surrounded by crystal clear glass. This was a stark contrast between the Egyptian Museum, where many objects had only handwritten notes about them and all of the large statues and sarcophaguses I saw were not covered by anything, and many people touched them, even though they weren’t supposed to. By the time our two hours were up at the museum, I had thoroughly enjoyed myself and wished we had more time available to explore the vast depths of the British Museum’s treasures.

However, as I said, time is of the essence in London, so it was time to move to the Leicester Square underground station to pick up some half-price tickets for a musical. We received week-long underground passes for our time in London, and they definitely paid off. We took the underground, or “The Tube” as Londoners refer to it, everywhere we wanted to go. One thing I noticed when traveling on the Tube is Londoners’ obsession with tabloids: everything fashion and gossip, they love it. Granted, we do have tabloids in America and a lot of people do read them, but there seems to be an understanding that tabloids do not contain the important news of the day and obviously do not adhere to journalism standards. From my observations, tabloids in America are often scoffed at, and if they are read, they are read for laughs rather than information processing. In London, so many people on the Tube were reading the tabloids and it appeared they were seriously viewing and digesting all of the articles, which had headlines such as “CROSSBOW KILLER EATS LIVE RAT.” London is said to be the spiritual home of journalism, so it really shocked me that many of their major newspapers have closed (certainly not London exclusive, as that is happening at a rapid rate in the US) and that all types of people, from elderly men to businesswomen were reading all of that crap. Maybe I’m missing something here…if anyone reading can fill me in on this, please do.

Anyway, we picked up our musical tickets for that evening. We had some extra money in our May seminar budget, so Scott and Jonathan gave us each 30 pounds to put toward a cultural arts event, like a musical or a Shakespearean play the Globe. Seven of us decided to go see Avenue Q and we got tickets great seats in the middle section of the stalls at the Wyndham Theater later that evening. After securing our tickets, we grabbed lunch at a London café and checked out yet another souvenir shop. We had the rest of the afternoon to explore London, but we knew we would be going to the major attractions (Westminster, Buckingham, Tower of London, etc.) over the next couple of days, so we decided to relax at Hyde Park.

I loved Hyde Park. It is lushly green and full of people relaxing by the Serpentine Lake, jogging with their dogs, or strolling with friends. I just felt completely comfortable and even serene there. I enjoyed that while most of the open lawns were neatly mowed, some were not and most of the bushes and flowers were not manicured and it gave Hyde Park a wilder, more whimsical feel for me. I felt kind of like I was entering The Secret Garden from the novel of the same name, if that garden was 625 acres. We walked for about an hour on the pathways by the Serpentine, just enjoying the fresh air, the sunshine, and the quiet, easy atmosphere of Hyde Park.

Soon, we came to a buoyed off area where there a handful of swans gliding around! One of my favorite movies as a little girl was The Swan Princess, and I have never seen a swan in real-life before, not even at a zoo. There were two things I noticed about these swans. One, they are damn big. Bigger than ducks, bigger than geese. They are bigger than small dogs like chihuahuas. They looked like they could hurt a child. But of course, they wouldn’t, because of the second quality I noticed. They really are graceful. Their necks form a perfect half of a heart and they simply, nonchalantly glide over the water, almost like they are sliding on glass. There’s none of the splashing and butt flaunting that ducks and geese do, just smoothly swimming around the lake, with an attitude like they know they are being admired.

Our next stop was the Diana, Princess of Wales, memorial. I remember Diana’s death well, even though I was only six when she passed away. I remember the weeks of news coverage and I’m 95 percent sure my mom cried. I have a Beanie Babie that was created in her honor that is dark purple with a single white rose on the left side of its chest. She was so loved by so many people across the world. When we were in Agra, India at the Taj Mahal, the VIP chair is called the Princess Di chair. Her memorial was different than I expected. I was expecting a grand statue, perhaps surrounded by water or a garden, where there would be crowds of people taking photos of her memorial. Her memorial is actually a gray rock flume in a shape in a loose figure-8 shape. There is a short waterfall that falls over rows of circular rocks, and then the water flows through the rest of the shape until it returns again to the waterfall. There is a grassy area in the middle, and the only way you would know it was her memorial is an engraving in the rock by the waterfall that said “Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain opened by her Majesty the Queen on July 6 2004” I read later that it was designed to express Diana’s spirit and love for children, and judging by the many kids I saw giggling while wading through it, it is certainly fitting.

We continued to walk to the park toward the Peter Pan statue. Kelly had been to London before this trip and she wanted to go back to see it again and thought the rest of us would like it as well. It’s a great, whimsical statue that symbolizes the carefree and lighthearted spirit of a child and I loved taking a fun photo with it. One thing we didn’t see in Hyde Park that I really wanted to was the famed Speakers’ Corner. But at least I guess it’s another reason to return to London someday. We had a couple hours free before it was time to leave on the underground to Avenue Q, so we went to London’s bookstore Waterstone’s to catch up with our journals. It is hard to write for an hour every day when we’re always running and doing things, then later we’re tired from the running and doing! So it was nice to relax with a summer berries smoothie in Waterstone’s coffee shop Costa Coffee and get a couple of entries finished.

Finally, it was time to head to Avenue Q! I absolutely love musicals and I was so excited to see one in LONDON! I usually only get to see musicals at Frost Fire summer theater in Walhalla, ND and the only major musical I’ve seen was Wicked in Chicago. West End Theater in London is considered to be “the highest level of commercial theater in the English-speaking world” along with New York’s Broadway, and Avenue Q definitely was high quality. It won three Tony awards in 2004 for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score.

Avenue Q is the funniest show I’ve ever seen, and I say show as a collective term for musicals, plays, movies, and TV shows. If I wasn’t laughing the entire time, I definitely had at least a smile on my face from the opening song to the finale. I was a little dubious about the use of puppets, but it made the musical even more humorous and it really does take skill and talent on the actors’ part to control the puppet’s mouth movements and gestures while moving their own bodies at the same time. Avenue Q is called the musical for the i-Pod generation, and I guess that is true, because I could definitely relate to it and got every piece of humor. But I also think that it’s relatable for anyone, no matter what their age. So many things in Avenue Q, like finding a job after college, finding someone you love to spend the rest of your life with, and finding yourself, are universal and I think nearly everyone, even if you’re uptight and PC, would find Avenue Q side ache hilarious.

I’ve never considered myself a theater geek by any means, and really the only experience I have with theater besides seeing Frost Fire shows and Wicked was acting in Missoula Children’s Theater plays as a kid. But seeing Avenue Q made me realize that Wicked was not a fluke—I really do love musicals. I guess it makes sense because I love music and movies, but I never knew I loved them until London. That’s one of the many wonderful things about this May seminar—you never know what you love, or hate, until you experience it. Sometimes, one experience isn’t even enough and you have to do it or see it again, and again, until it finally hits you in the face and you realize “Hey, I kind of really love this.” More musicals are definitely on my to-do list. Next up, the Legally Blonde tour stop in Vienna, Virginia.