tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post2089840245981192067..comments2024-03-21T22:19:26.920-05:00Comments on A Follow Spot: "Merchant of Venice" Meets "My Man Godfrey" at ISU's Westhoff TheatreJulieKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-63103256710910988332011-09-30T18:48:07.578-05:002011-09-30T18:48:07.578-05:00They did a lovely Edwardian Hamlet at the Illinois...They did a lovely Edwardian Hamlet at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival a while ago. Very Brideshead Revisited, which suits "Hamlet." That was played in repertory with "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," with the same actors in the roles in the other play, although not the Edwardian costumes. I think that was mixed modern dress. Or maybe vice versa. Maybe R&G was Edwardian and Hamlet was modern dress. Yeah, I think that's right.<br /><br />I also liked one at the Guthrie (Zeljko Ivanek played Hamlet and Julianne Moore was Ophelia) where they mixed periods. So Hamlet was modern dress, with black jeans and a black jacket, while Gertrude and the court looked more like the famous Guthrie production with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn (kinda 50s court dress with sashes and medals on the men), and Ophelia was kinda hippyish. <br /><br />I wish I'd seen Alec Guiness on stage in anything.JulieKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-90076657842193021142011-09-30T18:31:06.508-05:002011-09-30T18:31:06.508-05:00Wasn't that done with the Moliere play that yo...Wasn't that done with the Moliere play that you and I saw at the Guthrie all those years ago? When there were no more lines, there was a sudden change of light and music, and the aristocratic French lady suddenly looked frightened, and bowed, as if (I surmised) she was facing judgment after the Revolution. And blackout. I didn't mind it that much then (though I didn't feel it added much either), but since then I've seen the same trick pulled out way too often.<br /><br />We almost always see Hamlet staged in a later period, don't we? The Branagh film was Victorian, the Richard Chamberlain TV production was early Victorian. Alec Guinness did it at the Old Vic in the 1930s in a "modern dress" production that looks absolutely beautiful; in fact with the men's uniforms and the women's court gowns it was rather timeless in its look. I wish I could have seen that one.JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-59737730765796614232011-09-30T17:21:45.249-05:002011-09-30T17:21:45.249-05:00I don't recall what sort of ending was used fo...I don't recall what sort of ending was used for that Joshua Sobol "Merchant" I liked so much. But since he solved the Jessica problem by having her leaving Shylock being *his* plan (to keep her safe from Mussolini's blackshirts and the dangers of growing Fascism and antisemitism), the chipper party (including Jessica) definitely felt different. And when I say it was his plan, there was no dialogue added to tell us that -- we just saw them with their heads together and him giving her money and jewels and sending her away. But all silently. And very effectively.<br /><br />In this case, although it changed the play, it also solved a major problem, because it seemed as if it were Shylock's only way to see that his daughter survived instead of just another way that the Venicians spit on Shylock. As I said, it changed the play. But that was fine.<br /><br />I'm also getting kind of tired of this coup de theatre/boom/smack us in the head stuff to revive or remake older plays or works. Not everything needs a socko new ending. Although I did kind of like it at the time when the walls fell down in "Indiscretions."JulieKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-27604637246507417262011-09-30T17:01:43.701-05:002011-09-30T17:01:43.701-05:00" if you want to put your "Tempest"..." if you want to put your "Tempest" on the moon in 2525, or your "Much Ado" in the Wild Wild West in 1885 "<br /><br />Does it prove I'm a Shakespeare geek if I recognize both of these? Tempest in a SF future (if not exactly on the moon) is "Forbidden Planet," the 1950s film with Leslie Nielsen as Ferdinand and a robot as Ariel. And the Wild West Much Ado (actually, that premise has probably been done a lot, as the isolated hacienda with border skirmishes does fit rather well) was done at Stratford Connecticut in the same decade, starring Alfred Drake and Katharine Hepburn.<br /><br />Some Shakespeare re-positionings really do work well. And some are problematic. The Merchant in a setting closer to our time always feels itchy to me, because the attitudes of the characters don't translate well out of their era. That's the basic problem of the play for me in any case: not Shylock himself (there's no reason all Jewish characters has to be lovable or pleasant), but that the other characters -- the "good guys" -- are *so* virulently and unabashedly anti-Semitic. And they get no comeuppance, they're the lovers in a romantic comedy and everything ends happily for them. Which is why directors now often try to tack on a (necessarily wordless) epilogue -- Jessica's miserable, or Portia is a bitch, or Bassanio's a jerk, or Antonio's disgusted with them all. It sounds like this production does something of the sort. But even if I share the need for something more to happen to the characters, this isn't the answer. It's never integral, and the author wrote no lines for it.JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.com