Burritos, Mermaids, and Sartre
Plus: "The Macbeth Policy" of Presidential Campaigns
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Behind the Scenes at Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s Midsummer. Photos by Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz.
The Delacorte looks great and has coyotes. (Named Romeo and Juliet!)
There are many options for Bottom heads but this one feels particularly haunted.2
There are (as of today) 39 Shakespeare-related shows in the Edinburgh Fringe.
recommends Lost Lear.Jamie Lloyd on origin stories:
“Robert Icke always talks about wanting to be a director when he saw Michael Grandage's production of Richard III with Kenneth Branagh,” Lloyd tells me, “I just enjoyed drama club.”
Adding “noctambulate” to my “fun words for things that happen in Shakespeare plays” list along with “cruentation.”
The 24-foot dolphin and 18-foot mermaid that may have been an inspiration for Midsummer.
“The second act has little plot, but it does have the most dancing…”
Your annual Public Theater game of thrones/executive comp update. (previous.)
I love a good impact report and Actors Shakespeare Project does it beautifully.
19th c. polymath/photographic pioneer Henry Fox Talbot translated Macbeth into Greek verse in college. (and won a prize!)
Judi Dench wrote her name on wall of the Old Vic in 1957 when she played Ophelia.
I always forget that Satre (Sartre!) adapted Alexander Dumas’ play about Edmund Kean.
An audio Lear with David Tennant as Edmund, Toby Jones as Gloucester, and Tamsin Greig as Regan.
Opera America has lesson plans for the plays and operas of Midsummer, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet.
John Quincy Adams followed “the Macbeth policy” for his presidential campaign.
James Shapiro on choosing Not Shakespeare for “Books That Changed the World.”
“As if an angel dropped down from the clouds,” but make it Blake.
Jonathan Bailey on playing Edgar to Ian McKellen’s Lear.
…it's one of the hardest parts in Shakespeare…anything is easier than squatting down in a tiny little thong made of plastic bags covered in mud.
Recommendations
Tom Lehrer has died. We shall not see his like again. Fitting observances include: poisoning pigeons in the park, fiddling with your rosaries, and reciting the chemical elements.
Related: “Modern Major General” in ASL.
More of this, please.
Leon Katz on Adrian Hall via Oskar Eustis via Anne Cattaneo:
“I would follow that man into hell.” He inhaled his ever-present cigarette, paused, and added, “Of course if he was teaching theater history, we’d have to fire him.”
You’ll never guess what’s in the basement of the British Museum.
“Several extras were hoping to sue Ridley Scott for the conditions on Napoleon.”5
“In Defense of the Traditional Review.” (Paywall, options)
“The effort to seize, convey, and deepen one’s personal experience—to expand the two hours at a movie or a concert or a play into one’s own life, to extend that experience through one’s longtime aesthetic passion, and to do so with a sense of style that embodies the excitement and the energy of that experience—makes the review inherently a deeply personal work. Veering away from such essentially literary explorations of art, as the Times seems ready to do, is a disservice to readers and to art itself.”
Like this one.
You’re welcome:
Related: "the events of the play transpire in the form of some sort of chipotle-induced coma lucid dream."
A brief sidebar on the dramaturgy of modern fencing clothes in Shakespeare productions: (credentials.) Sir Andrew is wearing a jacket from Absolute Fencing which is the beginner-and-budget-friendly brand that many folks start with. So: PERFECT for Sir Andrew. Full marks. The Robert Icke Hamlet at the Armory on the other hand featured Leon Paul gear, which is top of the line (their masks have elastic webbing at the back instead of a hook which makes them easy to identify at distance) and 100% the gear a prince would have, whether or not he was in continual practice. (Cumberbatch also had the good stuff.) This may simply reflect the respective costume/fight budgets, but as an audience member who is pulled out of the story every time Hamlet says “bring me the foils” and is handed a sabre, I’m deeply appreciative.
Ah, for the good old days when you could simply hire the Soviet Army as extras. (In addition to many Russians, “Waterloo” has the best deadpan delivery of all time.)