The Night I Got to See James McAvoy IRL

Some things are serendipitous. Such as: me going up the frighteningly steep escalator from the underground to King's Cross and just happening to look up in time to see this:

Macbeth! I thought. Yay! They're putting on Macbeth. And it looks all edgy and post-apocalyptic. Cool! I'm studying stuff like that right now. And then I looked a bit closer.  

CLOSER.

James. Freakin'. McAvoy. I first saw Mr. McAvoy in a little-known movie called Inside I'm Dancing in which he plays a man who is paraplegic. At the age of 15, I fell in love with his too-cool bleached blond spiky hair, his accent, and the charm he radiated onscreen. 

I felt like I was a fan from the beginning, though most people probably do when it comes to actors who suddenly boom into stardom. Well, I thought. This is the trifecta isn't it? Shakespeare. Post-apocalypse. James. And to top it all off, the play was showing while my friend Anna was visiting, and Anna has to be about twice a big of fan of James as I am. So that's saying something.

I won't go into details about purchasing tickets. Let's just say it involved Anna getting up at 4am, me frantically calling my mother, lots of screaming, some jitters, and a joyful dance around my room at eleven o'clock in the morning. 

We planned the day out well. We went into London in the afternoon to have a truly English experience. Anna secured a Groupon for us for high tea at the Reuben Hotel on Buckingham Road. Close to the Palace, extra fancy. The hotel was actually so fancy I thought they might throw me out when I walked in. Thankfully they didn't. And we were treated to a high tea so posh that I was expecting gold flakes in my tea. I mean, the lady who served us shook out my napkin and put it on my lap for me. I've gone to my fair share of hoity-toity dinners (John's practically ONLY does hoity-toity), but I have never had that happen before. I had to restrain myself from laughing.

Tea started with champagne, moved to the biggest pot of tea I've ever had in my life, and concluded with a massive three-tiered platter of goodies. Bottom layer: sandwiches (chicken salad, egg and watercress, salmon and cream cheese, ham and mustard). Middle layer: plain and fruit scones with clotted cream and jam. Top layer: desserts (macaroon, peanut brittle layer cake, peanut butter and blackberry jam flan, oat and apple cake, etc.). By the time I hit the middle layer, I was stuffed, but I was certainly not going to waste this extravaganza. I took one for the team and finished it all. Yes, I, too, am impressed with myself.

We rushed out of the Rueben post-tea and booked it to the Trafalgar Studios. We had miraculously secured SECOND ROW seats. SECOND ROW, I repeat. We were practically on the stage. And we were center. Could it get any better than that?

And now: a quick (I'll try!) review of the play. First and foremost, I really loved the production aspects. The post-apocalyptic setting was conveyed really well aesthetically in everything from the grungy not-quite-but-almost military-esque costumes to the awesome use of floodlights, trapdoors, floor grates, and metal rolling tables. The three witches were androgynous gas-mask wearing fiends that crawled out of trapdoors like something out of The Ring. The fight sequences were well correographed and most of the actors displayed impressive Scottish accents (thank God someone finally kept the Scottish accents!). The acting was superb. I loved Claire Foy as Lady Macbeth and personally Mark Quarterly as Malcolm really shone in my eyes. And, of course, James.

There's this strange feeling that comes with seeing a famous actor IRL for the first time. You're so used to seeing them in movies, even huge blockbusters, that in some ways they don't seem like real people. So when James was suddenly less than ten feet in front of me, kneeling on the ground, trying to wash blood off his hands, my brain didn't quite know what to make of him. I thought, yes, that's James McAvoy. It clearly was. He looks exactly like he does in movies and photos, albeit covered in dirt and blood and looking a bit more beardy than normal. But on the other hand, it also didn't quite feel like it was him. I think that comes with the realization that this is just a normal person. I have more experience working in theatre, and seeing him onstage made me realize that he was just an actor, like all of the other actors I've worked with or have come into contact with. Just an actor, a guy who auditioned and got the role of Macbeth and was now performing it. It's a bit difficult to pin down, but it was a rather strange, though nice realization.

Anyway, James. He really filled his role to the brim. One of my favorite scenes was when Macbeth goes to see the witches one last time and they present him with three prophesies. In the playscript Macbeth sees three sets of ghosts that pass across stage and talk to him. In this version of the play, Macbeth drinks an eerily blue liquid and takes on a Jekyll and Hyde (or, actually, a Smeagol/Gollum) quality. He collapses on all fours, coughs like a hoarse corvid, and begins to prophesy as the spirit talks through him. It was a brilliant scene on the director Jamie Lloyd's part and rather impressive on James' part as well.

I won't go too much more into the play. I loved it. I really want to write about it for either my Shakespeare paper or my Contemporary paper, so hopefully I'll get that opportunity during the exam. Watching this play also made me realize how desperately I want to go into theatre as a career. I would have LOVED to work on this production, and only 20% because James was involved. This is my “thing”, I realized. Where I'm supposed to be. So thank you Jamie Lloyd and James McAvoy and Trafalgar Studios and London and theatre in general for reminding me that I have this beautiful goal ahead of myself. 

PS: With very few exceptions, the regular pictures were taken by Anna. The studio pictures belong to their respective photographers.