Richard II - The Chronicles of a Babyman

Pearl Theatre - NYC
December 18th, 2011


Brad - A
Chelsea - C

First of all, I'm sorry for the delay. This thing called Christmas happened and I was a bit busy celebrating the birth of the Lord. So, John M. you quit your sassing. But, I'm really glad you're reading!

So, day two. We slept in and were all excited for our second day! First we stopped off at Occupy Wall Street because we are "the people"and need to stomp that pesky 1%. To our dismay, this was the chaos we saw...

Nothin! Not an angry college student in sight! It was so sad. We cursed the bankers and went on our way. We then realized that the theatre playing Richard II was all the way up town so we got in a taxi and headed towards Broadway. Along the way, we looked to the right and saw this amazing man...

It is December and he is in orange shorts. It is 2011 and he is roller blading. This was amazing. We were nervous to drive in NYC and this modern day Indiana Jones is roller blading the streets. We were very impressed.

Ok, so down to Richard II. Here is the plot:

This is one of Shakespeare histories (aka one of the tough ones to wade through). It chronicles Richard II  being the king of England. It opens with Richard presiding over an argument between Bolingbroke (his cousin) and Mowbray (another nobleman), where Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of conspiring to murder some other guy. There are lots of gloves thrown to the ground and they decide to duel! At the duel, Richard steps in and banishes both of them. Bolingbroke is banished for 6 years (perks of being the cousin) and Mowbray is banished -- in the words of the great Theodore "squints" Palladoris -- For-ev-er. While Bolingbroke is away he builds up an army and comes back to take over as king and throw Richard into a castle dungeon. A friend of Bolingbroke thinks it is a great idea to kill Richard to make Bolingbroke happy, so he goes ahead and kills him! Bolingbroke is not happy, but hey, he's now Henry IV. Hello next play!

Ok, so this play was not awesome. It was really well acted (and crazy expensive) and I'm pretty sure we dropped the median age about 20 years but all and all it was just not dripping with action. It was acted out in true Elizabethan garb. Here is the stage...

The guy who played Richard II was great but he was super whiny. I'm sure that is how he is supposed to be but we spent 3 hours watching a weasily guy worry. So, I didn't love it. You know what I did love? The ADORABLE couple in front of us. They had to be in their mid 80's and the husband was blind. He sat through the whole play with his head down just listening. At intermission he turned to the girl beside him and said "this is really great, don't you think"? I loved it! I loved him! I hope when I am older, and if anything unfortunate should happen to me, that I still do the things I love with such zeal! I just really admired this man. When his wife came back from the bathroom she ran her hand down his face to let him know she was back. I LOVED that too! What a sweet tender way to say hello. So, this made the play for me.

Afterwards, we walked to Times Square and played in Toy 'R Us. It was terrifying. Kids everywhere. Luckily, they had giant candy bars to distract me.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Chelsea