Tea for (more than) two, or what would you name your twins?

 Last day in London, oh glorious Reader, 

And we had a good day.  I will cheat and start at the end, so the thumbnail pic is of this:

We had high tea after the play; high tea has become a thing I’ve done the last few times (originally on behest of a student 👍).  Because enquiring minds will want to know (from top to bottom) that’s a purportedly apricot macaroon (I was told there was little taste), a chocolate tart with a white chocolate leaf and a drop of citrus stuff on it, a raspberry mousse with a lemon biscuit, and, if you can’t tell, carrot cake.  The 3 I ate were good.  And the design is classy.

My sixsome were not really ready for this.  Only one of them had any idea what tea to order.  Two ended up with chamomile, two ended up with the “fruity house specialty”, and one another fruity “mountain tea” (it was a kind of black tea).  Only the one ordered Breakfast tea. 

The sandwiches were…well, maybe they are picky eaters, maybe not.  No one ate, though a couple took a bite, of the pickled red cabbage one.  There was a veggie one that was heavy on red and green peppers, and there was a smoked salmon one — only one person ate that.  The egg and chicken salad ones disappeared. 

It was a nice spread in a nice room.  It wasn’t easy getting a table for 7 in London on fairly short notice and aiming for 6 PM was the end of the high tea day.  But it was a good sample for them and they seemed to appreciate it — as, in fairness, they are the most appreciative and thankful bunch I think I’ve ever brought. 

Before tea, we went to the Globe for the class trip for the matinee of Comedy of Errors. 

Because it’s kind of funny, about getting there: three of the six left after breakfast (later on here) to look at bridges (I think they were starting at Tower Bridge and working back upriver to the Globe).  They said they’d meet us.  When we got there, none too early (maybe we needed more than an hour to be safer), they were nowhere in sight.  OC.  But it turned out that they were around the other side, not by the riverside entrance. 

As for the play: nothing I can say here can not be seen through the lens of us having terrible seats, which is kind of on me.  It was the only day we could go in the afternoon and due to blah blah blah I was late doing everything for the trip (we didn’t settle housing till March 10), so…I got the only seats available for any “in our budget” price.  The pic below shows you the angle, which would be less worse without the pillar (last week there was one of the beams you can see in the background in the way, but you could see around those).

Next, in the row behind us were a bunch of boys in their school uniforms.  As one of mine said afterwards, “they were about what you’d expect from teenage boys.”  🙄.  They talked during the production, they had some metal thing (I guess a water bottle) that they clanked around several times, and, in the most bizarre behavior of all, two of them thought the “cool” thing to do was to not laugh at the lines, but to fake laugh “as” (you know, like one beat late) everyone else did.  The eye roll I thought about laying on them might have killed.  So, enjoyable. 

Given that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?  Well, I don’t think it was good.  In the classic Globe thing, a la the Nat and RSC, they spent money for no good reason.  There was the prow of a ship sticking out from one of the beams to my left and over the groundlings’ heads (you can see the tip of it top left of the picture).   Why?  I’ll get back to you on that.  Then, for reasons I wasn’t clear on, several times in the play a guy pushed out a boat with people in it for them to make their entrance — you can see the “dock” going off stage right in the picture.  

Maybe the funniest part was that the Duke came out before the play to say hi and to tell us one of the actors was very ill and couldn’t perform and not an understudy but a “superhero” was stepping in as one Dromio, willing to “read the part from a book.”  And he then reminded us (if we didn’t already know) that this would be somewhat problematical because they were playing an identical twin.  Laughter ensued.  (FYI — there are two sets of twins, who, because the original is silly and “Uncle Will” (as he was called in last night’s play repeatedly) kept it, have the same names — two Antipholus’s and two Dromio’s.  Who does that?  But I hope you can see it’s almost inevitably funny)

It was the best gag in the play.  The tall black guy, wearing all black, with the notebook, stumbling (only a little) through his lines and those times where supposedly people are mistaking him for the short blond guy playing his twin brother…then the reveal where they both look at each other and give this look — well, it was the best part of the play. 

It ran 1 hour 50 minutes with no interval.  I got no ice cream and no respite from the Misfits behind me.  There were lots and lots of planes overhead and the pacing seemed a bit slow.  The opening bit where the father tells the tale of the lost twins was painfully slow, which it is supposed to be, but they never really picked up the pace. 

I have no more to say.  It wasn’t the best, or even close, to the best production of one of Shakespeare’s weaker efforts, and we move on.

Before that, the gang asked if I’d join them for breakfast.  I did.  I get a kick out of this group — they have the laser focus of a garden hose.  “Where can we go for a full English breakfast?”  I tell them where, we go there, and only one of them got the full English breakfast!  No one ate the black pudding, John.  Maybe the highlight (🙄students) was the one across from me asking what it was I was having for breakfast.  It was eggs Benedict.  She had never seen it before.  Wow.

But let me say — this is why we do programs like this.  A kid from central PA might not have ever seen eggs Benedict, or a thousand other things seen here in London.  There was talk at tea about both scones and clotted cream (no one seemed to be big fans), which were little known to most of them.  Smoked salmon was an unknown.  And professionals doing Shakespeare…nah.

But, again, they are a nice group.  They insisted on buying me breakfast, in thanks for my bringing them and guiding them around.  A gesture no others have ever done, as I recall. 🥲 

So, it felt good that they got some of this.  I hope it does something for them.  For me, I’ll happy to be home, fingers crossed, tomorrow night.  There’s a run to Fortnum & Mason to start the day, then home, McDuff. 

Alas, adieu