tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post6267242403140559434..comments2024-03-21T22:19:26.920-05:00Comments on A Follow Spot: "Measure for Measure" Raises Thorny Questions at ISUJulieKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-13412426863079567122010-11-01T22:26:12.023-05:002010-11-01T22:26:12.023-05:00Thanks for the kind words about my Angelo. You sho...Thanks for the kind words about my Angelo. You should have seen my performance in William Walton's "Façade" yesterday (with otherwise all-student performers)! 40 minutes of me reciting Edith Sitwell poems in rhythm to instrumental backup, in an English accent (and in one poem, Scottish!).<br /><br />I did look at about half the BBC Measure for Measure again yesterday. It lives up to my memory of it. Kate Nelligan is especially interesting, because her religious fervor blazes so strong (with heat rather than coldness), you can see how it could be magnetic for Angelo, and get around his defenses without her ever realizing it.JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-6734901501363103012010-11-01T19:52:42.730-05:002010-11-01T19:52:42.730-05:00Sorry I missed your comment, Jon! Yes, I do rememb...Sorry I missed your comment, Jon! Yes, I do remember your Angelo speech and you were pretty darn good. I found it very interesting that that was the speech you were attracted to, to present for your friend's birthday. But what a good idea, to have people give you Shakespeare speeches for a birthday.JulieKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-76505259871062406652010-10-30T19:00:03.886-05:002010-10-30T19:00:03.886-05:00Oh -- I knew I'd seen it at least one other ti...Oh -- I knew I'd seen it at least one other time, and now I remember it was at Arena Stage (DC) in 1986, in their in-the-round theater. Robert Westenberg, otherwise famous for musicals (Prince/Wolf in Into the Woods, Soldier in Sunday in the Park) was Angelo, and Kerry Armstrong, then a big TV name for being the Duchess of Branagh on Dynasty, was Isabella. The main thing I now remember is that they didn't go for any ambiguity (will she accept his proposal or not?) for the final tableau: she ripped off her wimple and threw herself into his arms. Which I didn't feel adequately prepared for.<br /><br />I'm now getting the urge to pull the BBC M4M DVD off the shelf and revisit it. <br /><br />Julie, do you remember that I used Angelo's "What's this?" soliloquy for my birthday video to my actor friend?JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-6906209750071146822010-10-29T22:04:52.311-05:002010-10-29T22:04:52.311-05:00I would love to see the Kate Nelligan/Tim Pigott-S...I would love to see the Kate Nelligan/Tim Pigott-Smith. All my sources site that one as a real success.<br /><br />I think "the need to see the complexities of human interaction" is exactly how I see the Duke's dilemma in M4M. He hasn't got a grip on real people or real human weakness and no idea how to try to keep people from all the vice and depravity that offends him, and throwing around harsh and punitive laws isn't going to work at all. <br /><br />I do like the play and I kind of love the pretzels the Duke and Angelo and even Isabella make of themselves.<br /><br />I saw it with a friend who said he'd always wanted to try to stage it as an out-and-out comedy, with even Claudio's tragedy made silly and crazy. I'd like to see how that worked, even if I don't think it really would.<br /><br />I will say I enjoyed the cocky little Napoleon of a duke I saw in a production a few years ago (set in the Empire period, naturally). He was very different from Jake's more diffident duke, but they both worked as approaches to the character.JulieKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-67503990878305720932010-10-29T17:53:41.500-05:002010-10-29T17:53:41.500-05:00I think of Isabella a bit like Desdemona; both can...I think of Isabella a bit like Desdemona; both can all too easily seem to be simply reactive, naive, and not too bright. I like to see both coming from a position of strength, not weakness: Desdemona has defied her father and her society and she knows what she wants so intensely that she makes some mistakes about the best way to handle things; and Isabella is so blazingly dedicated to her faith that she can be deaf to the complexity of situations. (NOT meaning that she should have yielded to Angelo!) <br /><br />In part Measure for Measure, like its companion "problem play" All's Well That Ends Well, is about the need to see the complexities of human interaction and be willing to get one's hands dirty when doing so.JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-71604814161416434902010-10-29T16:56:05.045-05:002010-10-29T16:56:05.045-05:00I will seek out the Kate Nelligan one!
I would ha...I will seek out the Kate Nelligan one!<br /><br />I would have liked the challenge of Isabella but played Juliet, the pregnant one, instead, a balance of casting decision with the Free Shakespeare Company that worked out OK. I think I wrote a poem in the voice of Isabella, though. A fragment of it survives, collaged into a longer poem....called "Self Portrait as the Women I Have Played," which isn't then strictly true except that aspects of several Shakespearean women are shared and juggled, et cetera.Kathleenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06559881249054540947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-75614064584886274622010-10-29T12:54:59.833-05:002010-10-29T12:54:59.833-05:00It's a tough nut, isn't it? And yet it'...It's a tough nut, isn't it? And yet it's one of my 4 favorite Shakespeares. (The others are more conventional: Hamlet, 12th N, Midsummer.) So much about it is so alive for us, and the difficult, messy bits make it intriguing. There are certainly some difficult bits, though: all that business of the substitute corpse late in the play (Bernardine?) which then kind of fizzles away if I recall right; and especially that in the last scene Isabella virtually fades away -- she has very little to say, in spite of the fact that we would REALLY like to know what she thinks of all this.<br /><br />I've seen it several times (not counting Wagner's operatic adaptation, such a piece of juvenilia that it got its first US staging 2 summers ago; I saw it and must agree that the opera itself is hopeless). While I was in grad school, a Shakespeare tour came to town (directed by Tyrone Guthrie); I had a distant balcony seat and found it disappointingly uncompelling and sometimes wrongheaded (at their first meeting, Angelo all but mounted Isabella on his office desk). I caught a matinee of a modern-dress production at the 3 Rivers Festival in Pittsburgh on one visit, in a pub being used as a black-box venue. It was all black-and-white design with harsh lighting, and such ear-splitting heavy-metal music that when I found myself on the sunny street outside at intermission, I decided that nothing could draw me back in, and walked off.<br /><br />By far the best I've seen it work is the video that's part of the BBC Shakespeare series. It's beautifully directed, and Kate Nelligan and Tim Pigott-Smith really do a job. I love that one.JAChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10942256334004773509noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-54774780616320502612010-10-29T11:26:10.849-05:002010-10-29T11:26:10.849-05:00You've played Isabella, haven't you, Kathl...You've played Isabella, haven't you, Kathleen? I think your dad should write a modern, two-hour adaptation to do at Heartland. It would fit the mission statement perfectly!JulieKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521424567356348282noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6816366806127608207.post-8888890519906272532010-10-29T11:00:18.025-05:002010-10-29T11:00:18.025-05:00Looks like a good one!Looks like a good one!Kathleenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06559881249054540947noreply@blogger.com