Will's Eve

[nineweaving]

Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.

What have been your most vivid experiences, hearing, seeing, reading Shakespeare?

Among so many others, I remember an idyllic Edwardian Love's Labours Lost, on a lawn by the river Cam, under the willows (there were strawberries and cream in the interval); that black-and-white galliard at the close

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Back when I was in university, and still returned every summer to the small town in which I grew up, the local summer stock company put on a season in a tent in the parking lot between the tourist office and the convenience store/bus depot; one of the plays was A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was in modern dress; it worked mainly because of the set, which was based upon the local landscape, and because of the cast (especially Oberon, who was a quietly suave young man in a tuxedo and black tie, and Bottom, who was a delightful character actor named Dave McClelland who has since returned to England where he seems to work steadily in tv).

[nineweaving]

Excellent! I love grassroots Shakespeare.

Nine

[stevendj]

Patrick Stewart, playing Othello with an otherwise all-black cast. Hands down the best set I've ever seen: stone battlements on stage, with a fine mist drizzling down through the entire play. Must have been absolutely miserable to act in, but atmospheric as all hell.

And, by coincidence, I saw Patrick Stewart do Shakespeare again tonight: he played Darth Vader in Hamlet.

[nineweaving]

...atmospheric as all hell.

Did they all have colds? But seriously, that does sound fine.

...he played Darth Vader in Hamlet...

All right, I had to look that up. Love his mouthing.

Nine

[stevendj]

It's worth seeing the entire movie just for his performance: Stewart plays a fantastically hammy actor, and you can tell he's having the time of his life.

[nineweaving]

Actors adore playing bad actors. It's one of the great joys of Galaxy Quest.

Nine

[madrobins]

When I was fourteen, for my birthday, my aunt offered to take me to the theatre, my choice. I chose a much hallooed production of Hamlet then on Broadway, with Nicol Williamson in the title role. It was the first time I'd really understood the way a line reading can turn a scene in a moment. Hamlet is imitating on the apron of the stage, n the middle of the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy, when Ophelia, very obviously coached by Polonius, wanders on upstage, pretending very hard to be reading a book and not to see Hamlet. She crosses, gets into a hammock, and pretends to read so ferociously that she looses sight of Hamlet until he's right behind her and barks, "Nymph, in they orisons be all my sins remembered

[nineweaving]

...a much hallooed production of Hamlet then on Broadway, with Nicol Williamson in the title role.

Ooh! Now that's a proper sort of aunt. Nicol Williamson was all a tangle of sparks and wires. He could buzz and bang to no purpose (I'm thinking of Excalibur). But when he connected--electrifying!

Wait, was that outmatched Ophelia Marianne Faithfull?

There was a bit where Pompey was juggling soft-sculpture dildos.

Hee! There's something about Measure for Measure that inspires mischief. My most memorable featured derspatchel and his Socko as the Provost and Bernardine. And in the fifth act, Juliet's waters broke with a splat!. Fortunately, I didn't have a little boy with me...

Nine

[madrobins]

That's nothing to the time we went to see (the original) Pippin. There's a sequence when Pippin and Catherine go to bed. The covers are drawn up, and there's a certain amount of wriggling thereunder. Meanwhile, from the wings two dancers, male and female, dressed in the most abbreviated of rhinestone costumes (g-strings, and pasties for her) come out, do a spectacular pas de deux, she leaps into his arms--and he drops her. At which point Pippin and Catherine's heads emerge from under the covers.

"This has never happened before," he starts--and the entire audience (except for Adam, seated next to me) bursts into laughter. Adam is, of course, bewildered. So, as Pippin and Catherine decide to try again, and the dancers repeat their performance and this time she leaps and he catches her triumphantly, I find myself explaining sotto voce to an eight-year-old why sometimes sex doesn't quite work.

I really did earn my salary.

[nineweaving]

I hope Adam remembers you fondly!

Nine

[sartorias]

Oh, that sounds glorious.

My memory is much more mundane: we were taken as high school students. It was a college production at UCLA, very bare stage, in the round, the Scottish play. Incredibly intense experience.

[nineweaving]

...very bare stage, in the round, the Scottish play...

The play itself. Perfect.

Nine

[lnhammer]

One of my first live experiences was in ninth grade, a performance of MacBeth on the campus of Howard University, set in some African kingdom whose significance escaped me at the time -- it had drums and intensity.

---L.

[nineweaving]

Wow. And the witches?

Nine

[lnhammer]

I don't remember them specifically, aside from it obviously being an all-black cast.

---L.

[nineweaving]

"A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come!"

It must have been terrific.

Nine