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One year ago: Keaton's Dogberry "is funny," "A Piece of Work," and saving Hall's Croft's walls.
Featured links: If you have never availed yourself of the utter insanity that is Michael Keaton as Dogberry in the 1993 Ken Branagh-directed “Much Ado,” strap in. The general audience consensus is, “huh…” before returning to more important matters like Keanu in those pants. However, his (sure, let’s call them) choices seem to have transfixed the film’s resident Shakespeare scholar…
Quick Links
Three ways to describe Henry Wriothesley:
Fine, be boring: Shakespeare’s patron / the “‘fair youth’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets.”
Peter Marks, former drama critic of the Washington Post, just got back from a 5-week Shakespeare course at RADA.3 Next up: Shakespeare classes with Patrick Page and (possibly) coming to an audition room near you. via
“I wasn't great as Lady Percy…André Bishop came backstage and said…we got great reviews even from one particular critic and after the show closed, I read that review. The critic said, ‘Everybody was brilliant except for Audra McDonald.’ So there you go. Don't read reviews.”4
Holland Taylor (intentionally?) quotes As You Like It to Sarah Paulson:
“When I get frustrated, if there is a part that I wanted that I didn’t get,” Paulson says, Taylor reminds her of her own artistic uniqueness with a simple phrase: “You’re not for all markets.”
Troilus and Cressida at the Globe. (“There's going to be lots of Helen merchandise.”)
The “Wise Children” theater company is now the “Emma Rice Company.”
“We also have exciting plans to celebrate and remount some of my past work, from my glorious time at Kneehigh, and less glorious time at Shakespeare’s Globe.”
“What if Macbeth were a 13-year-old child star and Lady Macbeth were her ruthless stage mum?”
Maureen Dowd on which Shakespeare play we’re living in. (none, please!)
More info on the RSC’s Lady-Macbeth-in-Iran video game. (previous) (more)
Simon Russell Beale is stepping away from Titus for health reasons.
I love character descriptions:
“Caius Martius, later Caius Martius Coriolanus…Comfortable with oligarchy.”
The New York Public Library is hosting an free online lecture series on Shakespeare’s Roman plays. They’ve already started, but you can still register.
Speaking of the Roman plays, “crowd riling” for the mob scenes is always hard (except for student matinees). Here’s one way to solve that.
The audience was split between the plebeians & the patricians (we got an email). They had landline phones in the foyer that you could answer & the person would ask you which side you were on & they said ‘Be sure to boo & hiss at any plebs you see’,
Mary Beard mentions Waterhouse’s “Mariana in the South” painting.6
A free talk from the London Archives on….Shakespeare’s London.
Carey Perloff remembers Giles Havergal:
When he arrived at the Citizens in 1970, he shocked the Glasgow establishment with an all-male, no-holds-barred “Hamlet” which appalled the press, delighted the public, and set the Citz on its new course.8
Speaking of Hamlets, a 100-year argument for contemporary costumes:
“Be it said that this production of Hamlet in the costumes of the present day is no mere piece of claptrap or ‘stunting’”
“…the 43-year-old Zhao led the packed Palm Theater in a meditative ‘ritual’ she and her cast had practiced throughout the shoot…Together, the crowd exhaled three long, loud sighs, then tapped their chests in unison, repeating softly: ‘This is my heart. This is my heart. This is my heart.’”9
Recommendations
You had to kill how many pigeons to make your bed?10 via
.We almost had a Pride and Prejudice musical starring Judy Garland with music by Cole Porter. (paywall)
Mr. Gelb said that the Met’s survival did not depend on the Saudi deal, but that it was necessary at a time when cultural institutions were having difficulty securing donations from a new generation of philanthropists. “The triple-digit billionaires do not give money to the arts,” he said.
Theater Women on Learning and Leading.
“My first week as an intern at McCarter Theatre, Carrie Hughes (then Literary Director) told me, ‘There’s no such thing as a dramaturgical emergency…’”
Like this one.
“historians say”
I took this intensive the summer before college. Emma Watson was in another section and invited the entire class of several hundred people to an end-of-class party at a London club. We thought we were the coolest people on the planet. Less cool was Taming with seven Petruchios and seven Kates where my Petruchio's choices started and ended with “being a jerk.” And they were briefly romantically linked? The 2000s were weird.
For the record, Ben Brantley thought she was “lovely…proving she can play pretty much anything.” Anastasia Barzee was the poor soul who had to sing (*in Welsh*) in front of Audra every night and Ethan Hawke was her Hotspur. I have not read his novel about playing Hotspur while his marriage falls apart. (based on a true story, maybe.)
Stop 👏 pining 👏 over 👏 Angelo.
1,700.
Keaton's Dogberry, for me, was an even bigger miss than Keanu's (not even) one-dimensional performance (a cardboard cutout would have been more expressive).
What makes Dogberry funny, to my mind, is the juxtaposition of his buffoonish words with his inherent dignity. That's why, for example, Fillion's Dogberry (in the Whedon version) is so much funnier. He doesn't know he's a joke. If he's just a putz (or, in Keaton's case, a weirdo) with a badge, the humor is lost. Let the words do the heavy lifting; they're up to the task.
Beetlejuice has his place, and it isn't in Much Ado.