Will's Eve
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 ( Read more... )
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 ( Read more... )
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Bottom/Pyramus hurt himself while dying during one performance, and Thisbe had to pop up and ask "Is there a doctor in the house? [loud laughter] No, really, I mean it. He's dislocated his shoulder." Fortunately there were about ten doctors in the house, and it was something that had happened before and didn't faze him too much.
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Art is nearly always a collaboration between the maker and another/others. They are co-creators. Shares vary: and sometimes the glory is nine-tenths in the head.
Nine
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I dunno. One of the best Midsummers I've ever seen was Belmont High School in 2011. They did things with characterization I've never seen before and they worked. Disappointing Puck, but as far as I'm concerned their Bottom is still outranked only by James Cagney.
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Nine
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There was the Pericles at Adams House, in which the Prince of Tyre relieved the famine at Tarsus by sticking a Pop-Tart in a microwave, and waiting one full minute in a dead revolving silence for the ping!
There was the Hamlet at Queens College, Cambridge, in which the Dane and Ophelia wore matching mime outfits, striped shirts, white face, red rubber noses and all. He kept pecking out bad drafts of his soliloquies on a typewriter---tap tap tap zing! clunk Arrgh. Rrrrrrip! The lawn was strewn with crumpled foolscap.
And then there was that indelible Richard II, way way Off Broadway. It was all done as a prison/madhouse flashback, hallucinated in an endless loop. For some reason known only to the director, Richard and his favourites were Romans, all in natty little skirts and crested helmets, and the Bolingbroke party came as ancient Britons. For the judicial duel they wore sacrificial golden sun masks. Nothing else. Stark naked flesh and live steel are not ( ... )
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weirdquark kind of cornered the market on Shakespeare the time rachelmanija started a discussion about terrible theater: "I still have no idea why the Duke in Measure for Measure was four vampires."
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Nine
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I've written about some of them before; I've seen some of them with you. I'm trying to think of productions that haven't made LJ.
My high school once put on a performance of Hamlet whose central conceit really didn't come off, but it was promising enough that I've remembered it to this day: each of the major characters was shadowed by a silent double in Goth face paint (collectively known as the "surreal clowns") enacting whatever the characters themselves were concealing from others or themselves. Primarily I remember that however decorously Gertrude and Claudius behaved toward each other onstage, their doubles were always making out against some piece of the set; while Hamlet was delivering "To be or not to be," his double was sitting on the edge of the stage, legs swinging, staring out at the audience. I don't remember what they did with Ophelia. I would have her conscious, sane, and horrified by the madness of herself, but memorywise I got nothing ( ... )
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O my!
That tiny Winter's Tale in 2009 was amazing. I loved their grave Mamillius. You saw he had a teddy bear. And then you saw he had a bear, and the penny dropped. A Jacobean one, of silver.
The Actors Shakespeare Project is uneven, but they're wonderful at least half the time. That silvery amphibious Twelfth Night; the morris masque in their Tempest; and (not Shakespeare, but) their perfectly excellent Cherry Orchard. It was off in Siberia, a mile from the Green Line, in the dead of this last winter, The way was unlighted and unshovelled, and I was in a fume and fret by the time I got there: but then I saw why they'd put it there. They'd found a drawing room to play it in, so when the house was closed, it was closed around us, dust sheets and all.
I think the best half Henry V I ever saw was in the Buttery back yard. Alas! Agincourt was rained out.
Nine
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Right into Exit, Pursued by a Bear, apparently.
(not Shakespeare, but)
Well, yeah. I discovered them with The Duchess of Malfi. That's still amazing.
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Exactly.
That Duchess of Malfi was heartstopping.
Nine
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It began beautifully. The set appeared to be the celestial workshop of the rude mechanicals. Slowly, I realized the figure at work must be Hippolyta-the brief exclamatory haircut, the beautifully cut steampunk jacket with the fantail-yes. She came to center stage, where a block of wood stood in for anvil, and was working at a piece of armor as the lights went down. Oooh, Titania as Daedalus!
Best thing in the whole production. After that, it derailed. Not that there weren’t lovely moments, when they let the actors just act. Or the scenery astonish: I loved their swordknot woven in the fairy round.
But everyone was always working something. And the language got lost in the devices. Titania and Oberon both had beautiful colossal heads, upheld like the Green Knight’s, and he had a Hand of Command, and all their energy was spent Upholding and Outpointing. Silent, as witness ( ... )
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As a collection of devices, that's an interesting clarification of Puck's role in the play. As a serious staging suggestion, I think I would keep being distracted by wondering what a gardening fork sounded like.
I like the idea of Hippolyta the armorer.
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Like a somewhat distracted actor.
I like the idea of Hippolyta the armorer.
I loved it. And then it all fell apart.
Nine
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Salvage that one image and do something with it!
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I've known some piping seven-year-olds (at Shakespeare, in the Cloisters) and I treasure their clarity. They don't know they're not supposed to like this stuff.
...Shakespeare in our blood...
Amen.
Nine
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