West End is the Broadway of London. This is where all of the best plays and musicals perform. We thought it would be fun to see a play while we were there especially since Sarah told us about the wonderful shows that she saw while she was living in London. So, doing what we do best using our very large brains we deduced what shows were playing while we were there. Sadly, Lion King was sold out. There were several other shows of less interest and one that we knew little about: the 39 steps.
You may know the 39 steps as a Hitchcock movie or as any of about 12 other movie versions. Now we had been expecting some sort of musical adaptation, since the West End is well known for musicals. It was not a musical. It was instead essentially the Hitchcock film adapted for stage and performed by 4 actors. Since the list of characters is somewhat staggering, there was a great deal of hat switching, accent donning, and conversations with self. The production was fun, if not quite what we expected. The two best elements were the actor with giant eyes and a remarkably malleable face, the actors acting out a wind (whether from door opening, walking across the moors, or running outside a train) this was accomplished by leaning into the wind and shaking whatever loose clothes they had to suggest a breeze, and the end when with all 4 actors on stage a gun is fired from the wings stopping the villain before he can complete his dastardly plan (all the actors reacted by counting themselves, checking behind the curtain, and confirming with each other that it really was just a cast of 4, before the villain could finally die). Another good moment was when the malleable face guy was playing the very old mayor, his tottering geriatric walk was phenomenal.
So, we can add to our list of England experiences a night at a West End show.
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