Who's Afraid of the Brothers Grimm?
I dragged classytart and baronmind to go see this with me. Since I don't imagine many of you are going to fly to Edinburgh to catch this--or any other--show, I'm going to spoil the hell out of it. You've been warned.
The play begins with Wilhelm getting his panties in a twist because everyone's ruining their fairy tales and giving them happy endings. Jacob tries to calm him down, and Wilhelm storms out to change the face of modern storytelling. And... then he comes back to watch some tele with Jacob. It's not entirely clear why.
Using this as a framework, the bulk of the play is short skits in the form of adverts for imaginary products: a perfume called Greed (the Three Bears lounge about the stage whispering things like, "Greed," and "She's so greedy," while Goldilocks pouts and poses and tells how wonderful Greed is), a shampoo called Love (endorsed by Rapunzel), and most notably Altogether Insurance, the sponsor of the show the Grimms are watching (I'll get to that in a moment).
Altogether Insurance pops up a bit too much, for my tastes. Each commercial is different, but they all play on the same basic premise: The Big Bad Wolf enters, sets a scene of some sort (banana peal on the floor, sign pointing to a false short-cut, etc). Humpty Dumpty enters and gets badly injured. The Wolf re-enters (if he's left) and says, "Are you the victim of an accident that was not your fault? Altogether Insurance. You're in good hooves." It's a funny bit, but there were simply far too many of them.
Occasionally the play would return to Jacob and Wilhelm, bickering about fairy tales, and, in one case having a bit of a scuffle over the remote, that resulted in a few minutes of a Britain's Got Talent parody. The Hansel & Gretel bit was fantastic, but the rest of the parody I could have done without.
The show they were really watching was Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose. If you've never read any of Wilde's fairy tales, for shame. This one, for you heathens who haven't read it, is an absolutely beautiful and tragic story about a student in love, who has been promised a dance with the object of his affections, if only he brings her a red rose. The Nightingale overhears him lamenting the lack of red roses in his garden and sets out to find him one. She eventually finds a bush that produces red roses, but the bush has been badly hurt by a storm and will not bloom that year. BUT, if she sings the sweetest, most beautiful song she has ever sung he can grow a rose. BUT it will only be red if, while singing this song, she stains it with her heart's blood.
To stage this, the actress playing the Nightingale and the actor playing the Rose Bush tangoed. And as the tango ramped up in intensity, the Rose Bush delivered bits of narration, largely having to do with the Nightingale pressing herself harder against the thorn and the thorn pushing deeper into her chest. I'm not going to lie. It was sexy. And I was vaguely uncomfortable about the children in the front row.
Overall, the show was really excellent, although, as mentioned above, flawed. I think there's a solid show in there, and with a little bit of tweaking, this could be a really stand-out play.
x-posted to alluringlore and told_tales
The play begins with Wilhelm getting his panties in a twist because everyone's ruining their fairy tales and giving them happy endings. Jacob tries to calm him down, and Wilhelm storms out to change the face of modern storytelling. And... then he comes back to watch some tele with Jacob. It's not entirely clear why.
Using this as a framework, the bulk of the play is short skits in the form of adverts for imaginary products: a perfume called Greed (the Three Bears lounge about the stage whispering things like, "Greed," and "She's so greedy," while Goldilocks pouts and poses and tells how wonderful Greed is), a shampoo called Love (endorsed by Rapunzel), and most notably Altogether Insurance, the sponsor of the show the Grimms are watching (I'll get to that in a moment).
Altogether Insurance pops up a bit too much, for my tastes. Each commercial is different, but they all play on the same basic premise: The Big Bad Wolf enters, sets a scene of some sort (banana peal on the floor, sign pointing to a false short-cut, etc). Humpty Dumpty enters and gets badly injured. The Wolf re-enters (if he's left) and says, "Are you the victim of an accident that was not your fault? Altogether Insurance. You're in good hooves." It's a funny bit, but there were simply far too many of them.
Occasionally the play would return to Jacob and Wilhelm, bickering about fairy tales, and, in one case having a bit of a scuffle over the remote, that resulted in a few minutes of a Britain's Got Talent parody. The Hansel & Gretel bit was fantastic, but the rest of the parody I could have done without.
The show they were really watching was Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose. If you've never read any of Wilde's fairy tales, for shame. This one, for you heathens who haven't read it, is an absolutely beautiful and tragic story about a student in love, who has been promised a dance with the object of his affections, if only he brings her a red rose. The Nightingale overhears him lamenting the lack of red roses in his garden and sets out to find him one. She eventually finds a bush that produces red roses, but the bush has been badly hurt by a storm and will not bloom that year. BUT, if she sings the sweetest, most beautiful song she has ever sung he can grow a rose. BUT it will only be red if, while singing this song, she stains it with her heart's blood.
To stage this, the actress playing the Nightingale and the actor playing the Rose Bush tangoed. And as the tango ramped up in intensity, the Rose Bush delivered bits of narration, largely having to do with the Nightingale pressing herself harder against the thorn and the thorn pushing deeper into her chest. I'm not going to lie. It was sexy. And I was vaguely uncomfortable about the children in the front row.
Overall, the show was really excellent, although, as mentioned above, flawed. I think there's a solid show in there, and with a little bit of tweaking, this could be a really stand-out play.
x-posted to alluringlore and told_tales