Fall you back a little/ With the bony lady.
That was the best thing ever. The world needs more plays like this. The Revenger's Tragedy: easily the most entertaining theater I've seen in years, and it wasn't staged or professionally costumed or off-book. It was a read-through, and it was brilliant. Do it again, do it again!
*deep breath*
I did not in fact dream this:
We were all watching a Jacobean melodrama presented in a staged reading in some sort of Elks Club-like building, only it had big picture windows that looked out on a lake. The actors wore costumes, but there was no named theater company; they seemed to have all assembled just for the fun of the thing. gyzki was there, in a crown and a velvet waistcoat, alexx_kay was there in a woolly hat, and kestrell was in the audience. The play was like Hamlet without all the boring introspection and hesitation to murder, and with lots more horrible deaths.
VINDICI
I'faith then, father, thou wast wise indeed:
"Wives are but made to go to bed and feed."
There was a pleasant-faced youth playing a hero, er, protagonist, subtly named Vindici, who, like Hamlet, trotted around talking to a skull. Unlike Hamlet, he had made up his damn mind before the start of the play to kill lots of people--those who had murdered the former occupant of the skull, or who had offended the hero's family, or who were just generally a damn nuisance and ought to die. (I thought of W.S. Gilbert's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "Then, later on, you stab your aunt, because--/ Well, I can't tell you why you stab your aunt,/ But still--you stab her.") The rest of the play was Vindici's effort to kill lots of dudes. SPOILER ALERT: he succeeds. This leads to absolutely no narrative tension in the main plot, but tons of dramatic tension between the villains (i.e., almost everybody but Vindici).
DUCHESS
Oh, what it is to have an old, cool Duke,
To be as slack in tongue as in performance!
Everybody was excellent; there wasn't a weak performance in the entire thing. All the actors went for the crude joke whenever there was a choice, and it was FREAKIN' HILARIOUS. I lost count of the times that actors pointed at their crotches, made wanking gestures, did pelvic thrusts, etc. etc. OK, perhaps I am easily amused, but you would have laughed too if you'd been there. There was a guy playing a bastard son who was a rip-off of Edmund from King Lear and Iago from Othello, who grinned all the time to such a ghastly degree that I couldn't look at him without laughing. Also there was an evil creepy rapist character. Junior the Rapist. I am not making this up, you know. Also there was a skull in a long red wig. That thing was terrifying. gyzki had to make out with it.
SPURIO
Old Dad dead?
The point at which I fell in love with this play was the above Duchess's seduction of the above bastard, Spurio. See, Thomas Middleton? He was more than just a hack ripping off Shakespeare. He could actually write engaging scenes. The Revenger's Tragedy is melodramatic in the best possible way. There is a hero and an overarching plotline (Vindici manipulates people), but there are also loads of characters, everybody wants stuff all the time, they only come onstage to get or do or achieve something, and most of them will claw each other bloody for the sake of that something. It means you're always rooting for somebody and are eager to see a certain outcome, then are deeply satisfied or horribly disappointed.
DUCHESS
...Oh, what a grief 'tis, that a man should live
But once i' th' world, and then to live a bastard!
The curse a' the womb, the thief of nature,
Begot against the seventh commandment,
Half-damn'd in the conception, by the justice
Of that unbribed, everlasting law!
I have certain strings that are very easy to pull. One of them is that I always feel sorry for female characters trying to seduce guys by showering them with goodies and money. (Duchess: That jewel's mine that quivers in his ear, Mocking his master's chillness and vain fear.) It reminds me rather too much of when I was nine and thought I could win men's (boys') hearts by giving them chocolates. Another pullable string of mine is that anybody looking for a job or desperate for advancement in the world commands my instant sympathy. I've been there too many times. The Duchess yanks all of Spurio's own strings as hard as she can, playing on his shame and resentment and offering him what he really wants, more than fancy earrings and money: an opportunity to roundly screw over his father and all the legitimate heirs. (I can't find my program. The actress was brilliant.)
SPURIO
...Duke, on thy brow I'll draw my bastardy,
For indeed a bastard by nature should make cuckolds,
Because he is the son of a cuckold-maker.
Can't argue with that one. Also, all the physical comedy was over the top, and that struck exactly the right note. Here were a universally funny cast of actors who knew how laughable their script was and could do it justice. alexx_kay and another guy played two more of the Duke's heirs. I forgot their names instantly and thought of them as Abbott and Costello. They were sort of the Revengers Lite, only without Vindici's skill set. This is what I mean by Middleton's sense of melodrama: Abbott and Costello want to have their older brother, Lussusorio, executed while he's in jail on trumped-up charges. They send in an order to have "their brother's" head chopped off, only by that time Lussusorio has been released. The only brother still remaining in jail is Junior the Rapist, whom Abbott and Costello really like and are close to, because he's an asshole and so are they.
The scene, which was wonderful in every way, plays out like this:
Abbott and Costello are presented with a basket containing a severed head wrapped in blankets.
They rejoice.
Lussusorio appears, alive and well.
They scream and then pretend to be glad to see him.
Lussusorio walks off, looking suspicious, because he's not stupid.
The penny drops and Abbott and Costello look fearfully at the Basket O' Head. Oooohh nooooo...
AMBITIOSO
Whose head's that then?
I'll always remember fondly the sight of Alexx hopping up and down on the spot screaming "Vengeance!" This is outdone only by gyzki, who was left dead onstage with no one to carry his body into the wings, raising up on his elbows and heels and turtling his way off the stage.
VINDICI
What, brother? Am I far enough from myself? [puts on a +10 Hat of Disguise]
In short, A+++++ would watch again. You should have been there, and you, and you. It's all made me resolved to do more theater, to be the agent who makes play readings happen. I wish the same group would do more such plays ('Tis Pity She's A Whore, maybe? They could get laughs out of that stinker, if anybody could) but this was a gem. I'm lucky to have seen it.