Stratford Upon Avon

Our trip to Stratford turned out to be more eventful than we had hoped.  On Friday, on the way home, we picked up our tickets for the train at 9:12 the next morning from Marylebone station to Stratford.  We arrived at the station in plenty of time and sat down for a coffee/tea. The station seemed very empty and after some looking around, we realized that there were no trains going from that station that day because of engineering works.

So one of the national rail employees told us to take the underground to Paddington Station, take the train to Reading, then Oxford and then Warwick and take a cab from there.  When we got to Paddington, the information person there told us we should go to Leamington Spa and take a cab.  But, she said, neither Leamington nor Warwick were close to Stratford.  All of this would have been kind of a lark if we hadn't had to get to Stratford by 1PM to see King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  We decided to take the advice of the first person and went to Reading....

Lynne waiting on the platform for the train to Oxford.

When we got to Warwick, we were completely baffled about how to get a cab.  A guy in a store told us to go to the town center and there would be a cab stand.  By the way, Warwick is lovely, old, quaint, etc.

But it has a Saturday market and therefore taxis waiting.  We got into one and asked to go to the Royal Shakespeare Company, not knowing how long it would take or how much it would cost.  In fact, it took about 20 minutes and cost 16 pounds..... Not bad.

We got to the theater a bout 45 minutes before the show...enough time for a sandwich in the cafe and a stop at the loo.  The theater building is quite large

but the theater itself is very compact.

The show, itself, was  very good....very well acted.  But the production was quite confusing.  King Lear and his daughters, etc. started out in medieval garb, then took off their robes to reveal something from the turn of the 20th century and later there were even soldiers with first world war costumes.  A bit confusing as to time and place....maybe the director was trying to make the point that the play was universal.

It was the final performance for that particular production of King Lear and at the end, Greg Hicks, who played the King, spoke directly to the audience about how wonderful the experience had been and how cohesive the company was.  He also said we had been a fantastic audience---one of the top ten in the year and a half of the show--and introduced his 100 year-old father, whose birthday it was.  It was very moving.

Here we are standing in front of the theater right on the Avon river.

Since we had not arrived at the train station, we had no idea what times the trains were going home so we walked toward the station.  Both of us were kind of disappointed about the town itself.  It seemed more of a Disney version of an old English town, instead of an authentic one.  We were especially aware of this after having been in Warwick.  It was beautiful but too commercial.

This is Shakespeare's  birthplace.  I cropped the picture so you don't see the very new Shakespeare Learning Center, two doors down where you can enter the house.

Anyway, we decided to go back to Oxford for dinner rather than staying in Stratford (which was very crowded).

On the train to Oxford we met Dr. Helen McCabe, who was very good in helping us navigate the trains and find a place to eat.  Here she is in front of Oxford's Ox in front of the train station.

Helen is a recent graduate of Oxford in political philosophy and is now a teacher there.

We finally got home about 10PM, exhausted but satisfied with our adventure.