xiphias | Entries tagged with shakespeare

So, there's a thread going on elseLJ about "The Happy Ending Shakespeare Company" -- how to make the Shakespearian tragedies end much quicker and happier.

http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/56566.html
http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/56865.html

Here's my attempt:

GLOUCESTER
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Have been chosen by the producers
Of Extreme Makeover
To be refashioned according to the stamp
Of the common rabble's fashion sense.
'Though many may consider this cause mad
To find oneself remade into a clone
Of every pretty face which leers and struts
Across a carpet on fair Oscars' Night
Yet for my part I find I would
Rather have my twisted back set right.
My twisted mind I find will suffice
To make my fame in reality TV.
In these days I will now overmatch
Dog the Bounty Hunter and Richard Hatch.

Tonight was the opening night of the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble's production of The Tempest, running 8 pm this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and again next week on November 2 through 4.

The short version: one of the fantastic things about living in Boston is college (and community) theater -- for less than the price of a movie ticket, you can see live theater, and this is an example of how much of a good thing this is. It's well worth the $8 a ticket it costs -- at that price, how can you go wrong? It's a hell of a fun way to spend two hours.

Lis (aka

cheshyre and

riba_rambles) had never seen the play, and I haven't seen it in long enough that I only remembered the barest outline, and this production was a fine introduction and re-introduction. They played it straight -- no tricky staging or unusual period setting, and did it quite competently and enjoyably. Nothing fancy, just straight-up Shakespeare done by people who clearly understand their characters and the play, and are having fun. And how can you avoid having fun seeing such a production?
( Details within: I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible. First, the cast )
( Comments on the production itself )
So, to summarize: if you've never seen The Tempest, or it's been a few years, this is an excellent, straightforward production, and you should see it. If you've seen The Tempest a lot, then presumably you like the play, and you should therefore see it.

It's playing Thursday (which already happened), Friday, and Saturday of this week, and Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of next week, at MIT's Little Kresge Theater (that's the theater downstairs in the Kresge building, y'know, the little one, the one under the big Kresge Auditorium). It's $8 a ticket. Even if it was a bad production, it would be worth seeing at that price -- and this is in no sense a bad production. True, it's amateurish in parts, but I don't count that against amateur theater. I think Shakespeare would approve. More importantly, I think you will approve when you see it.

The Actor's Shakespeare Project opened their third season this past Thursday, with Hamlet, starring founding member Ben Evett in the title role. Other veterans included Marya Lowry as Gertrude, Sarah Newhouse as Guildenstern, and a couple minor roles, and Ken Cheeseman as the ghost, the Player King, and the gravedigger. Many of the other roles were played by newcomers to the ASP stage, although not newcomers to the stage in general -- the guy who played Claudius, Johnny Lee Davenport, has a goal of performing in every single Shakespeare play -- and he's nine plays away from doing it. He also does film and television. So, as you can see, ASP continues to attract top-notch actors to work with them -- all the members of the cast in major roles have resumes like that.
( Spoilers for Hamlet abound inside. This review assumes that you know something about how the play goes. If you DON'T know how the play goes, skip to ticket information and go, already! )
( How were each of the major characters portrayed? )
( What did the ASP do with their production to bring something new to the experience of seeing Hamlet? )

http://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/season3/hamlet.html

The show started last Thursday, and is running through November 12, in the sort of standard "Thursday through Saturday nights, with matinees on weekends, which meas two shows on Saturdays" pattern. Tickets are $40, $35 on Thursdays, and there are student and senior discounts. I heard a rumor that they've got a discount for Dorchester residents, too, but I don't know details.

It's at the Strand Theater at 543 Columbia Rd in Dorchester, and you're allowed to park in the bank parking lot next door in the evenings. Also, there are a bunch of buses that run along there, but I don't know the details, since Dorchester is out of my usual stomping grounds.

We went to the Yale Museum of British Art, which had on display six portraits purported to be of William Shakespeare. One was a painting of an actor dressed up as Shakespeare, made a couple decades after Will's death -- not a fraud: they were very clear that this was an actor; two are probably just someone else who maybe looks a little like Shakespeare, one is probably actually genuine, and two are deliberate frauds.

One of the frauds is the Flower portrait, donated to the Shakespeare Museum by Sir Desmond Flower.

It looks like this:

It's painted over a picture of the Virgin Mary, actually, and, if you look at it, it's a pretty bad job of it, too.

Can anyone make an icon of this which says "My Shakspr iz pastede on yay!"

[Crossposted to

bard_in_boston]

I had always believed that you couldn't do a more-or-less straight production of Love's Labour's Lost -- the basic structure of it works for a modern comedy, but it's best used as a framework to hang your own work off of. I thought that a lot of the humor in this play was too much based in the peculiarities of the late sixteenth century to translate directly for a modern audience.

The Huntington Theatre Company has proven me wrong.
( Read more... )

The Actor's Shakespeare Project, our favorite Shakespeare troupe, is putting on "All's Well That Ends Well" through May 14th. If I say that, of the six plays they've done so far, this is the weakest, please understand that it is STILL amazingly good. It's just that it's very hard to follow up the best "King Lear" in 20 years in the United States.

I guess, if I had to rank them, I think I'd go
King Lear
Richard III
Measure for Measure
Julius Caesar
Twelfth Night
All's Well That Ends Well

Maybe I'd swap "Julius Caesar" and "Measure for Measure." Perhaps this simply means that I like tragedies better than comedies? I just don't feel that there's as much "meat" in "Twelfth Night" and "All's Well" as in the other ones -- although there IS enough, and the company and director find it, and use it.

Now that I've said that it's not as good as their other productions, let me tell you just how amazingly good it was.
( Read more... )

We got up on the early side, got showered and dressed (the hotel soaps are Rusk soaps, by the way, which turns out to be one of the few brands I can use, so I got to have the rare pleasure of using the HOTEL soap instead of the soap I brought with me), and went down to the corner to The Corner Bakery to grab a something light for breakfast. At a couple minutes before 8 AM, we met up with Josh, Missy, and Nate to drive up to Milwaukee -- we picked up our cousin Barry at his apartment on the way. Barry lives in Chicago, but his parents were the folks we were visiting, so, as long as we were driving up there, there was no reason not to have Barry along. Especially since we like him and all.
( Read more... )

So, Lis and I were talking this morning about Malvolio and how he ends up leaving on the line "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you." And how that can give a rather somber and disturbing tone to the end of the play.

And we were trying to think of other ways you could read it, and you could play it.

We were thinking, what if Feste, Fabian, Maria, and Malvolio were old friends -- the four of them having hung out together and pranked each other back and forth -- and with Sir Toby Belch hanging out with them, too. And Malvolio, upon being made the steward and therefore the superior of Feste, Fabian, and Maria, began to get "too big for his britches," and that caused a split between them.

Is there any way that we can read Malvolio as realizing what happened, realizing that he HAS become too big for his britches -- that his supposition that he could marry Olivia was hubris and would be an upset of his natural place in the world -- and that his natural place was with his old friends. Can we find a way to read, and a way to play Malvolio so that his final line, "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you," means that he's going to become one of the gang again -- he's going to short-sheet their beds, and do humorous pranks on them. Can we read this as Malvolio saying that he's going to become playful, not bitter, and that he's going to be happy and antic in his proper place as a servant, rather than puritanical and bitter trying to be higher than he is?

First, does the text support that interpretation? Can we read the play and think it plausible that Shakespeare intended Malvolio's story to have a reasonably happy end? Second, whether Shakespeare intended it or not, do you think that it COULD be played that way, and how would you go about doing it? And third, would that interpretation be satisfying to you as an audience member if you saw it played that way?

So, a real good sign that you're going to enjoy a Shakespeare production is if four beautiful women come out in their underwear and corsets and dance around, flirting with and throwing Christmas crackers to members of the audience. At least, for me, that's a good sign that you're going to have fun.

And then, as the (live, onstage) musicians finish up their dance number, they go into a slower, more melancholy piece -- and you realize that it's "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence. As they play, Greg Steres, as Duke Orsinio, enters, hops up onto a window ledge next to the musicians, and tells them, "If music be the food of love, play on -- give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die."

I don't know how many people in the audience recognized what song was being played on cello and piano -- but for those of us who did, and know the lyrics, we realize that they found a song whose (unsung in the play) lyrics and music perfectly compliment the emotion and message of the scene. And that level of craftsmanship and detail is, as we've come to expect from Actor's Shakespeare Project, present throughout.
( Read more... )

While I was doing heavy lifting helping out a friend-and-relation move today, I suddenly put my finger on what stuck me as not QUITE perfect about Derek Henderson's Falstaff.

He's too good-looking.

Okay, this is one of those criticisms that I feel that, if this gets back to him, I don't think he's going to be TOO offended -- but I think that's what was hitting me.

I see Falstaff as far more dissipated, dissolute, maybe even a little bit verging on the sleazy. I see him as sort of having the REMNANTS of charm -- one of those guys who's WAY past their glory days. A little bit pathetic -- again, not TOO much; you ARE supposed to like him and all.

But Henderson is ACTUALLY good-looking. A good thing about that is that he carries himself with the self-confidence of an attractive guy who knows he's attractive, which is CLOSE to what I would want for Falstaff -- but it's not quite it. I would see Falstaff as the kind of guy who TRIES to carry himself with that kind of self-confidence, but actually, deep down, knows that he really ISN'T really all that and a bag of chips -- so there's more bluster, more false bravado.

This is something of a pet peeve.

The word "doth" is pronounced "duth." It's the same word as "does", except that the "s" is pronounced as "th". You just pronounce it as if you were saying "does" but with a lisp.

This was beaten in to me, figuratively, when I was fourteen, by Ms. McCarthy of Arlington High School -- a holy terror of an English teacher, who didn't LITERALLY beat these facts into us, even though she was an ex-nun, because, as it was a public school, she wasn't allowed to whack us with rulers. Ms. McCarthy was one of the teachers I most hated in school, and respect most now -- I respected her then, too. She's the one that was claiming that "Merchant of Venice" wasn't anti-Semitic, and required us to write a term paper demonstrating that. I wrote a paper, with pages of endnotes and an appendix, showing that there was absolutely no way that Shakespeare COULDN'T have been anti-Semitic, and that OF COURSE the play was anti-Semitic.

This, of course, was a total defiance of what the teacher instructed us to do, and I was prepared to get an "F" on it.

Final page comment was "Excellent paper, well researched, well written, I disagree with everything you say, A-." The minus was for a couple typos and a subject-verb disagreement. Which were examples of TOTAL carelessness on my part, and she would have been well within her rights to knock it down to a B+ or even a B for that kind of sloppiness.

Anyway, in tribute to a hated English teacher whom I quite love, I pass along this pet peeve: it's pronounced "duth".

So, I just got back from the Theatre@First production of "Merry Wives of Winsor."

One line summary is "It was good, go see it." But I'll go into more detail about what did, and didn't work. And one thing that sucks is that, when I talk about things that didn't work, they'll be things done by friends of mine, some of whom may be reading this. Just so you're not going to worry too much, I loved the acting; the things I had some problems with were some set design choices and some directorial choices. Given that the director and the set designer are both people I know and like, it's kind of tough to criticize, but I'll do my best. Even so, while reading anything critical, please note that I was roaring with laughter, as was the whole audience, and that one of my friends, who had also never seen the play before, was missing a really good show at the Avalon, with a band that he's not seen in ten years that he LOVES, and afterward was raving about how, as much as we wanted to see that band, seeing this play was a much better choice.

Anyway, this will be in no particular order, since I'm just sort of stream-of-consciousness-ing it as I'm thinking about what I saw.
( Read more... )

So, the Actor's Shakespeare Project production of King Lear, which is their first show of their second season, has been extended twice, and is currently sold out until the end of the run. Even so, they occasionally have standby tickets, and Lis managed to get two for tonight.

I've never seen nor read the play before -- I was more or less familiar with the general outlines of the plot (three daughters, two of whom are scum, nice one gets screwed over, it's a Shakespearian tragedy, so everybody dies (except for in the Nachum Tate version, which was actually the more popular version for most of its history, in which Tate managed to put a happy ending on it, but that's neither here nor there.))

So, my impressions will partially be comments on the play, and partially on the production.
( Yes, I put spoiler cuts in for Shakespeare plays. Hey, I like watching them not knowing what's going to happen. )
So, now I've seen King Lear. And I don't think that I could have seen a better production. I loved this cast, I loved the space and how they used it, I loved the lighting design, the sound design, and everything.

I wish I had a place that was appropriate to keep my trained hunting phoenixes. Phoenixen. Phoenicies. Whatever.

O for a Mews of fire. . .

Lis was looking up what else Tina Packer -- the force behind Shakespeare and Company, and the director of the production of King John -- has done.

She played "Anne Travers" in the six-part Patrick Troughton episode of Doctor Who "The Web of Fear." It's one of those "lost episodes" where the tapes were destroyed, but we found a script. She was also in "Dial a Deadly Number", an episode of The Avengers.

So, Lis and I just saw Shakespeare and Company's production of King John, directed by Tina Packard, last night. This is one of those plays that's not often performed these days, although it was moderately popular in the eighteenth century.

It's a long play, with lots of characters, and I was worried that I was going to get bored, or confused, or lost.

I mean, let's face it -- at heart, I'm a groundling. I'm SLIGHTLY better socialized than the groundlings in Shakespeare's day, in that I don't usually throw stuff at the actors when I get bored, but not much.

I loved the play.

I don't know if the credit goes to Shakespeare's script, Tina Packard's direction, or the actors' skill -- or, more likely, a combination of all three -- but it was FANTASTIC. I had such a good time. I think everybody should see it.

Anyway, there's this scene, okay? The Duke of Austria is fighting for France. Some time before the start of the play, he'd killed Richard the Lionhearted, and wore a lionskin that apparently Richard had gotten from a lion he killed. Other characters are Constance, who's the widow of Geoffery, and mother of Arthur, on whose behalf France was fighting, and Philip the Bastard, who's Richard's illigitimate son, and the real hero of the play -- a brash, honorable, and violent knight, eager for the fight.

So, France and England have made peace, which pisses the HELL out of Constance, who is vituperating and cursing the King of France and everyone else who swore holy oaths to defend her claim and is now backing out of it. Austria, for instance, was GOING to fight for France, but is now backing out. . .

AUSTRIA
Lady Constance, peace!

CONSTANCE
War! war! no peace! peace is to me a war
O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame
That bloody spoil: thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!
Thou little valiant, great in villany!
Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!
Thou Fortune's champion that dost never fight
But when her humorous ladyship is by
To teach thee safety! thou art perjured too,
And soothest up greatness. What a fool art thou,
A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear
Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,
Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend
Upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength,
And dost thou now fall over to my fores?
Thou wear a lion's hide! doff it for shame,
And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA
O, that a man should speak those words to me!

BASTARD
And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.

AUSTRIA
Thou darest not say so, villain, for thy life.

BASTARD
And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.

It's hysterical. And he KEEPS taunting Austria this way. It's brilliant, and very, very funny. It works better on stage than written, but it's really great on stage.

I don't know why this one is so rarely performed. If performances of this can be as good as Tina Packard's, it doesn't deserve obscurity.

So, as I said, we went out to Lenox to see the production of Taming of the Shrew.

Tina Packard, the founder and heart of Shakespeare and Company, hates the play, and so, any production they do has to be really damn good to make up for that. And this was really damn good.

Let's start by talking directly about the reason people hate this play. The first time I saw it, when I was in junior high school, I was a little less aware of how the Scientologists, and cults in general, and Guantanamo Bay, and so forth, work. I didn't know how brainwashing and psychological torture are done.
( Read more... )

First time in several books since we haven't. I think we've bought each one at midnight since. . . book 2? I think they were doing midnight sales at book 2. If it wasn't book 2, it was book 3.

But we were out in Lenox, for a Shakespeare play at Shakespeare & Co., and were staying overnight to see a free play at noon the next day. And while they did have bookstores in Lenox open at midnight, we decided not to buy it, because, if we had, Lis would have stayed up all night reading, and not been alert for the play the next day. Which, since she'd gotten press tickets on the assumption that she'd write a competent review, wouldn't be a great thing.

The two shows were Taming of the Shrew at night on the main stage, and, The Tamer Tamed the next day on the Rose Footprint Theater -- John Fletcher's 1611 sequel to Shakespeare's play.

I'm not writing reviews right now, 'cause I'm still thinking about them, but I do want to mention that it was amusing that the director of Shrew did, in her speech thanking everyone after the show (opening night reception), mention that she was going to be leaving soon to make sure to pick up the new Harry Potter.

The Actor's Repertory Theater is a theater troupe associated with Harvard, and tonight was the last performance of a show put on by some of their students.

"Love's Labors Lost" is generally considered to be one of Shakespeare's "lesser comedies", and sometimes is even classified as a "problem play.” This is how Shakespeare scholars say, “waitaminute -- this play sucks.”

I mean, there’s a lot of good stuff in the play, but, on the whole, not much happens, and there’s a whole lot of boring bits in it making fun of Elizabethan scholars, which is apparently really funny if you know a lot of Elizabethan scholars.

So, modern productions, recognizing these facts, take the basic setup, characters, and outline of the play, and all the good scenes and lines, throw out the boring bits, and then fill in the rest with whatever they want.

When Kenneth Branaugh did it, he filled it in with 1930s musical numbers.

This production used mainly 1950s musical numbers. Oh, and Don Adrieano was Chico, Costard was Groucho, a couple of the minor roles were Harpo, and Jaquenetta was Marylin Monroe.
( Read more... )

Mom and Sibling came over around noon, and we hung out around the house for a bit and marveled at just how messed up Dave's cat is. She's so adorable and so messed up.

Then we went to Sepal in Watertown for lunch. Lis had a lamb maklouba, Leila and I had felafel sandwiches, and Mom had a fatoush salad. Then Leila, Lis, and I drove out to Lenox to Shakespeare and Co.
( Read more... )

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Bartender Geek

pedagogy and rhetoric a specialty

(no subject)

MIT Shakespeare Ensemble The Tempest

Actor's Shakespeare Project Hamlet

A quick comment, partially to remind me to write a REAL post later

Huntington Theatre's "Love's Labour's Lost"

Lis and I saw "All's Well" last night

Our second day in Chicago

Thinking about Malvolio in Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night by the ASP

Oh, another thing about Merry Wives

Oh, one more pedantic nitpicky thing about Merry Wives. . .

Merry Wives of Winsor

King Lear, Actor's Shakespeare Project

(no subject)

Lis has proved that Shakespeare and Company has geek cred

Great lines in Shakespeare

Shakespeare & Co.'s Taming of the Shrew

We didn't buy Half-Blood Prince at midnight last night

Love's Labors Lost at the ART tonight -- a review of sorts

Comedy of Errors -- the play -- my day wasn't one, the day went well, the play was Comedy of Errors.

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