London

(Do you know the Muffin Man, who lives on Drury Lane?)

I've been to London half a dozen times, so I've done most of and seen most of the famous things to do and see, but the one thing I'd never done was go to a musical or play in the West End. One of my days staying with Olivia I set off to London proper to scope out last minute day-of tickets to one or more shows. I had a mental short list of the productions I was interested in seeing, and when I came out of the metro the very first box office I saw was Shawshank Redemption, which had been near the top of my list. I headed straight in and was delighted to find out they offered an incredible day-of purchase price of L10, and for that price would give you the best seat they had left. For the matinee show at 5:30 I got 2nd row center, which was the best seat I'd ever had for any production anywhere in the world and at the cheapest price. Feeling pretty smug with myself I headed to the TKTS booth, which had been my original destination, to see the full line-up of shows that still had availability. Both New York and London provide these TKTS booths to sell tickets at half price (usually, sometimes only 30%) for whatever productions still have seats that day. I wanted a 3:00pm matinee and I wanted a musical to balance out the play I would see later on, but the pickings were slim. My choices came down to Dirty Dancing, Chicago, and Avenue Q (which I'd already seen in NY). The woman quoted me L45 for Dirty Dancing, which sounded expensive to me, so I told her thank you but that I would try at the box office myself. After a 20 minute dash and running in at least one circle, I found the theater and got a balcony seat for L27, a much more reasonable price. I still had 30 minutes before the show, so I grabbed a quick lunch and then found my seat.

I had high hopes for Dirty Dancing because the movie had such great songs and great dancing, and musicals are all about song and the dance. I've never been so disappointed with a musical in my life. It was downright terrible. The acting was flat, the leads didn't even sing any songs, and the dancing had only one routine that kept repeating during each song. It was like the choreographer had gone on holiday a week into rehearsals. I left early disgusted and tore over to Shawshank hoping this wasn't a pattern.

Luckily, Shawshank blew me away. It was one of the best productions I've ever seen, and I left the theater having been genuinely moved by the performance. I highly recommend it to anyone who saw and even remotely enjoyed the movie.