The National Theatre is right around the corner from my flat. When I found that out I suspected that I would be spending every other evening and most of my money there, but it turned out not to be the case. Other than seeing one show there the first week I arrived I haven’t been to see anything. It’s all the more inexcusable because when I walk back from school across the bridge I’m forced to look at it for the entire walk, and they have a huge sign that repeatedly informs you the time, the temperature and what shows are playing that evening.

Once I was done with the first batch of papers, though, I decided to reward myself by going to see a production of Measure for Measure there. Measure for Measure is my favorite Shakespeare; mostly for sentimental reasons though it is not a sentimental play. I’ve never actually seen a production of it, however, so I was thrilled when I found out that the National was doing it while I was going to be here. I got my friend to come with me, and hoping to avoid the same Anderson Project fiasco I made sure that we were in our seats ten minutes before the production started.

I was glad because it was a show I didn’t want to miss a second of. The production was done in modern dress, and there were multi-media elements that usually really annoy me, but they seemed to fit the play perfectly. The production was stark, and the performers impeccable. This is why I came to London—to see Shakespeare performed in his native tongue (Though, interestingly, there have been studies done that determined British speech has evolved so much since the time of Shakespeare that his actors would have sounded nothing like the actors I saw on Thursday.  A “Shakespearean” English accent is apparently much closer to an American southern accent, which is a creepy thought. Try reciting “To be or not to be” in such a way that “be” has two syllables and you get the idea).

They did the entire play in a little under two hours with no intermission, and I never felt squirmy once. I’ve been really disappointed with my Shakespeare class since coming here. It’s team taught by three lecturers that don’t look much older than the other students, and the lectures generally consist of them reading verbatim a lecture from a piece of paper that they never look up from. It’s hard to keep from day dreaming and impossible to keep from doodling. What’s worse though is that most of the focus is on criticism rather than the plays, which sort of kills the joy of reading them, and I was almost moved to agree with my experimental theatre teacher who claims that Shakespeare should be put away in favor of Beckett. But then I see a production like the one I saw last night and I’m reminded that my experimental theatre teacher is in fact a pretentious polemicist and there’s a reason Shakespeare is Shakespeare.