Brothel Keepers, Hot Pants, and Potter Teeth

Plus: Is Brad Lander’s sonnet any good?

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Quick Links

• For my money, this “Shakespeare For The City” spot isn’t it. (“Let me be that I am” is terrible advice for the NYC subway.³) In context, asking, “What is the city but the people?” leads to a murderous riot not a rainbow. However, I am an enormous fan of free Shakespeare, so please: get that corporate cash, but ask someone to check the script.⁴

• John Conklin has died. He was a beloved designer and dramaturg⁵ whose final productions at Glimmerglass are currently running.⁶ He created this swoop of a Tempest, this Henry V (on horseback!)⁷ among many others.⁸

• Michael Gambon’s “Harry Potter” teeth took 20 minutes off his Falstaff.

• “Born With Teeth may not require hot pants, but…”

• Among the many treasures in the RADA archives as curated by Lolita Chakrabarti:⁹ 19th c. Lady Macbeth wigs,¹⁰ Alan Rickman’s “student mouth,” and Ben Whishaw’s brothel keepers.

• Is Brad Lander’s original Shakespeare in the Park sonnet any good? (again)

• Another entry in the eternal “What shall we call this mashup of Henry plays so that audiences want to come see them?” game.¹¹

• An argument for As You Like It as the play of Now. (vs. Coriolanus)¹²

• (vs. Hamlet)

  …after the traumas of the past few years, Hamlet’s sorrow is likely to feel familiar, as is his sense of powerlessness…

• Uh oh…can we keep sending John Lithgow over?¹³

Recommendations

• Run! (source)

• “Call Rich for recipes.”

• “Your husband is not your husband..”

• “We found French underwear in an ancient Sumerian city.”

• A three-country bike trail with a 24/7 wine vending machine.

• Odysseus and precommitment.¹⁴ via

  The Garden of Forking Paths

• “TFW: it’s 1,800 years ago and your mum writes to your fella offering to pay for your camel-taxi.”

• “if you're named James and hold elected office, maybe take it easy come June. Avoid overexertion. Stay hydrated. Don’t annex Oregon.” via

  Alexis Coe

1. Like this one.

2. As of last week, the previously-recommended 12 Foot Ladder is no more.

3. That crowded-train moment when you feel something lick your elbow and pray there’s a chihuahua in a purse nearby.

4. The best “this isle is full of Shakespeare” marketing spot I’ve ever seen is still the British Museum’s 2012 “Shakespeare: staging the world” exhibition.

5. His work includes a 1959 undergraduate musical Cyrano by Maltby and Shire directed by Nikos Psacharopoulos featuring Austin Pendleton, Bart Giamatti, and…Dick Cavett?!

6. This picture of him sitting in tech in May is impossibly moving.

7. Featuring John Douglas Thompson as The French Ambassador.

8. His acting credits include:

9. Also in the article: there is plenty of competition for “most unkind thing ever said to an actor” but “I can forgive you, and you’ll eventually forgive yourself, but Racine in his grave never will” is up there.

10. She was a brunette. (Related via

Anne Helen Petersen

.)

11. I don’t think I’ve seen “Rare Accidents” before. Someone must have catalogued this, yes? Please send me your favorites, in recent memory the Guthrie had “A Brittle Glory,” (ditched in favor of “The Histories”) and Stratford (the Canadian one) had “Breath of Kings: Rebellion & Redemption.” “Rose Rage” and “The Henrys” are classics.

12. There’s a metaphor somewhere here: “Eschenheimer [Rosalind]… herself leads a kind of double life — when she’s not acting, she’s a lighthouse keeper and boat captain in Rhode Island)…”

13. I’m currently reading Giant so he’s top of mind. Other Americans we’ve sent over to do Shakespeare?

14. Precommitment, “in which we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of our volatile whims by binding our future selves” also sounds a-lot like Isabella.