Fall you back a little/ With the bony lady.

[teenybuffalo]

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

Comments

[negothick]

Did you deliberately choose quotes that sound as though they could be heard in a pub in today's Britain: "Whose head's that then?" could be the follow-on to "Come on over here and join us" "Who's asking?"
Followed by "An old cool Duke".

But how did you stumble upon the reading? Was it through my "signal boost"? Guess I forgot to say that these were mostly the good old Carolingian Baron's Players/Mummer's Guild/ Survivors of 30+ years of Shakespeare productions, more or less?

[alexx_kay]

One of the great things about Middleton is that his language is much closer to modern English than Shakespeare's, even though he's only a little younger.

Here's another great example:

LUSSURIOSO
Why, well said; come, I'll furnish thee, but first
Swear to be true in all.

VINDICI
True?

LUSSURIOSO
Nay, but swear!

VINDICI
Swear?
I hope your honour little doubts my faith.

LUSSURIOSO
Yet for my humour's sake, 'cause I love swearing.

[teenybuffalo]

I loved that they had all that, and yet when people swore they said things like "S'lid" and "God's wounds."

[teenybuffalo]

No, I just chose all the best, funniest lines I could find on a quick skim of the play, looking for the most amusing moments from Friday night. To tell the truth, though, they do make me laugh with their slanginess. I loved that Spurio calls the duke "Dad." Technically, I knew they had that word back then, but I never thought to hear it in a play.

I didn't realize you'd done a signal boost. gyzki mentioned going to a rehearsal in a LJ post about something else entirely, and I followed up on that. Glad I did!

[cheshyre]

Have you seen the film of Revenger's Tragedy, starring Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard?

[csecooney]

Ha! I asked that before I read this! It's a QUITE fantastically weird, isn't it? Almost unbearable, but a great deal of fun at a party.

[teenybuffalo]

No, but now I really really want to. I'll wait till this production has faded from memory a little bit, though, because it was cool enough that I think nothing could quite compare.

[sovay]

Also there was a skull in a long red wig. That thing was terrifying.

It's canonical!

[csecooney]

Isn't there a scene in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin where they're putting on The Revenger's Tragedy to mock the Faerie Queen?

[sovay]

Isn't there a scene in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin where they're putting on The Revenger's Tragedy to mock the Faerie Queen?

Yes. The production is being staged as a satire of department politics.

[teenybuffalo]

Yup. The funny thing was that they had swapped out the real skull used at the beginning for a plastic and much-less-realistic skull on a stick. And yet it was terrifying. We all just kept looking back and back at its empty eye-sockets.

[csecooney]

Did you ever see this?

http://www.amazon.com/Revengers-Tragedy-Christopher-Eccleston/dp/B00027JYEY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321734741&sr=8-1

It's SO BIZARRE. But the costumes are fun. Jacobean drama is WEIRD! There's a great one called The Changeling that Caffeine Theater did here in Chicago. You should get a group together to read that one out loud!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changeling_%28play%29

[alexx_kay]

The Changeling is (probably) by the same author as The Revenger's Tragedy.

[teenybuffalo]

I want to! Every film buff I've talked to about this, which is everybody I've talked to about this, says it's not to be missed. Eddie Izzard?!

Jacobean theater. Middleton. Read-throughs. Right now I'm at the hiver-hovering stage before I decide to take the next step and hold a really big play reading, or try and take a play semi-staged, as this one was. I'm severely tempted but nervous. ogosh. Maybe I'll try and get people together for "King Lear" at my house later in the winter, after you're in New England and settled in.

[greenlily]

I love how I got to this entry so late that other folks have already brought up the two things The Revenger's Tragedy always makes me recommend to people: the Christopher Eccleston/Eddie Izzard film (also featuring Sir Derek Jacobi, one of my very favorites, as a gloriously icky Duke) and the marvelous play-within-a-book sequence in Tam Lin.

[teenybuffalo]

I remember that scene--will have to go back and take a second look at the Pamela Dean book.

Apparently everybody who has the Jacobean melodrama bug has a good word to say about this Christopher Eccleston film. I've watched Eccleston in some absolute rubbish just because I can't get enough of him (he was my favorite Doctor). This will be a pleasant change of pace, a play I actually like.