Bachelorettes, Branagh, and Biofiction
Plus: “The Fool…is replaced in this production by a turtle”
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Production roundup: The Two Gentlemen of Killarney, a Romeo reboot, NAATCO’s Henry VI at the Public, Coriolanus with “a Heated Rivalry moment,” fourth-grade circus Shakespeare, “The secret lives of Windsor wives,” As You Like It with a “neglected unicorn,” a Korean Lear (“The Fool…is replaced in this production by a turtle”), a queer 1970s NYC Macbeth, a D&D Macbeth, Irish Macbeths, + an “inspired but insane” Macbeth.
Jane Lapotaire has died. She rode into the Globe on a horse and “half attacked” Michael Dobson with her handbag, but I will always think of her saying “pyramids.” (bonus: Branagh’s Hamlet’s invisible dog.)
Nataki Garrett is the interim artistic director of African-American Shakespeare. More at Be a Ladder Leader.
“Here’s the hardest thing about Shakespeare: what the hell are you saying?” (related, via Blackfuturist Shakespearean)
Hudson Valley and Shakespeare in the Park have casts. (Deirdre O’Connell’s Nurse should be a sight to see.)
Shots at Chalamet (does he still want Hamlet?): Jonathan Bailey + The Library for the Performing Arts + Josh Johnson with the best take of all:
…sometimes we do the same thing that I at least think Timothée was doing when he said that, which is we confuse commerce with creativity.
Hamnet roundup: on SNL UK, to sob or not? (via Edel Semple), Chanel sonnets, a “very expensive” earring, what does “quietus” actually mean? + Dana Stevens on adaptation:
The shift in medium from prose to film might seem to offer some advantages for a project that sets out to explore the gaps in a historical figure’s life story; with its ability to suggest interiority through wordless imagery, cinema can evoke mystery without attempting to explain it. But the long history of Shakespearean biofiction on-screen tells a different story—one of imaginative spaces crammed to the brim rather than left provocatively open…
…Another scene shows the young author already workshopping Hamlet’s future last words—“the rest is silence”—years before the personal loss that supposedly inspired them. What grates about these moments is how, like the conventional Shakespeare biopics before it, Zhao’s film drains the mystery from the relationship between art and life. Is the implication that Shakespeare was born with his complete works already inside his head, like eggs waiting to hatch? If his authorship is simply a matter of incubation—if the experiences we’re watching him live through are not in fact formative—then why bother dramatizing his life at all?
Related: You have one day left to download Katherine Scheil’s “Anne Shakespeare’s Epitaph” for free + the other Anne is in on the joke.
From pre-dentistry to Macduff. More + “When you have a matinee performance, but you still have a theatre to run”3
Share your favorite character for a chance at $250 in books.
On the unfinished Plummer Lear film + Titania: “every flower has a stem.”
Nora Polley on Richard Monette’s Taming:
It really was an extraordinary extraordinary show…even today when you can see the sun and the moon in the same sky, I always think of that show.
Recommendations
The rise of the concept snack, 600 tubs of French onion dip, + sky meat. (paging Doug Mack / Snack Stack)
On theater as service (“what wouldst thou?”) vs. “self-therapy with an audience present.” via Igor Golyak + Staying alive: How L.A.’s big 3 theaters plan to do it
If you didn’t grow up singing Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag” in the car, there’s still time to learn.4
A play written at the South Pole:
Another guest, Mr. Nincompoop Poodlefaker, writes off Antarctica entirely…
Helen Shaw on critical origins:
It makes a big impact on a kid that there are certain sanctioned activities where you are allowed to break stuff. Interesting, I thought, as I mashed potatoes into the carpet.
Like this one.
Has anyone done a proper Drunk Shakespeare vs. Sh!t-faced Shakespeare investigation? Why are there two? Enquiring minds want to know.
Thanks for linking to Helen Shaw’s ‘antidote’ article. It’s a good optimistic read at the beginning of the week for theater professions. Thanks also for the Shakespeare podcast roundup from a couple posts ago!