Much Ado and WWII
Apr. 16th, 2007 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasIn response to my Wellesley review of Much Ado, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vvalkyri linked to the Rude Mechanicals' recent Much Ado, also all-female, and also set post-WWII.
Which is a somewhat interesting synchronicity . What is it about World War II that matches with Much Ado? I'm ignoring the coincidence of both being all-female casts, since that's only a choice for the Rude Mechanicals; Wellesley is obviously always single-sex.
For Much Ado to work, you have to have returning soldiers. And you have to have soldiers returning from a heroic, popular, and obviously just war. In American culture, we've really only had one of those in living memory. There have been times since then where our troops have been used in necessary and just causes, but none of them were both large-scale and popular. We haven't had ticker-tape parades for returning troops since the Forties.
vvalkyri linked to the Rude Mechanicals' recent Much Ado, also all-female, and also set post-WWII.Which is a somewhat interesting synchronicity . What is it about World War II that matches with Much Ado? I'm ignoring the coincidence of both being all-female casts, since that's only a choice for the Rude Mechanicals; Wellesley is obviously always single-sex.
For Much Ado to work, you have to have returning soldiers. And you have to have soldiers returning from a heroic, popular, and obviously just war. In American culture, we've really only had one of those in living memory. There have been times since then where our troops have been used in necessary and just causes, but none of them were both large-scale and popular. We haven't had ticker-tape parades for returning troops since the Forties.