Plants, planes and a dragon covered ‘great’ pagoda was not the mix I was expecting in Kew Gardens. This visit happened because the gardens was the venue for watching Macbeth performed under the stars – by the Australian Shakespeare Company (of course – come to the UK, find Aussies!). Liana and I took a stroll around some of the gardens before the show. Note: the show was great, and now I know the story of MacBeth (a murderous nutter who wanted to be the King of Scotland, plus his equally ambitious wife). The witches had the best costumes, and now I know how the ‘bubble, bubble, toil and trouble’ fits in to the story.
The strangest (London-est?) part of the whole thing was that Kew Gardens is in the Heathrow flight path, so every 1-3 minutes (I counted) during the five hours we spent there, a large, international plane would fly over the park. Ah, the serenity. Luckily the actors had factored this in and the microphones were effective and sound team excellent. Some pauses in dialogue, may have been timed for aircraft as well as theatrical effect…
Lots of plants and a ‘great pagoda’ originally built in 1762 and adorned with 80 dragons. We were too late to check out the palace, orangery and inside the temperate houses.
