Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight
They were celebrating the Bard in the Square on Saturday. A hoarse-voiced woman in modern black and a ruff declaimed all of the sonnets to the pit (it took her four hours). This crowd being this crowd, she had--well, not groundlings, exactly. Walklings-by who stood. A roaming company played scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream all over: the lovers' quartet ("How low am I, thou painted maypole?"), and most of the rude mechanicals' scenes. Really broadly, as befitted the traffic. And really well. At "Find out moonshine," Peter Quince got out his phone. Their tedious brief tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe was gloriously demented, as it should be. Quince (aglow with pride and anxiety) kept shuffling his note cards for the prologue; Wall wore a painted tube like a sweat sock, and rolled it up so the lovers could whisper through his legs ("I kiss the wall's hole"); and Bottom managed the most spectacularly protracted suicide I've yet seen, working in every death they'd thought of, in crescendo: he stabbed himself with a penknife, in attacks ranging from Sweeney Todd to seppuku; he flung himself from heights onto the bricks of the pit; he leapt just short of traffic when the lights changed; he hanged himself in Thisbe's bloody scarf; and finally, brought on a gas can full of water, and drenched himself: which was trembling Quince's cue to flick a lighter...
Then there was cake.
And after, quite a few of us repaired to a nearby microbrewery for craft beer and more scenes. Helena and Bottom did a fierce bit of Shrew; Quince was a brilliant Cassius; two Wellesley women-one tall as a crane, one boyish, blockish, with startled hair-did scenes from All's Well (not the Hamlet they brought cards for, damn it); two other women did a passionate balcony scene, speaking with their bodies to the heartbeat of the poetry; and Michael Anderson told stories.
Happy 451st, Will!
Nine
Then there was cake.
And after, quite a few of us repaired to a nearby microbrewery for craft beer and more scenes. Helena and Bottom did a fierce bit of Shrew; Quince was a brilliant Cassius; two Wellesley women-one tall as a crane, one boyish, blockish, with startled hair-did scenes from All's Well (not the Hamlet they brought cards for, damn it); two other women did a passionate balcony scene, speaking with their bodies to the heartbeat of the poetry; and Michael Anderson told stories.
Happy 451st, Will!
Nine