James Earl Jones, Garlic Ophelia, and Auntie Shakespeare
Plus: Ian McKellen wants to play "Shakespeare's gayest character," Paris catches swords not breaks
James Earl Jones Dies at 93
James Earl Jones died this week. He was not only the voice of Mufasa and Darth Vader, but also a legendary classical actor in the works of August Wilson, Shakespeare, and others. His entire 1974 King Lear is on Youtube and is magnificent.
At the 2009 White House poetry jam where Lin Manuel Miranda debuted Hamilton in-progress, Mr. Jones recited Othello’s “Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors.”
Ian McKellen Wants to Play the Merchant of Venice
There's a part in Shakespeare that I hope I might still get to play. He's the merchant of Venice. Now the merchant of Venice is not the Jewish money lender but he's Antonio…Antonio is gay and when the story starts for him he is so sad because his boyfriend has just announced that he wants to get married…He's right at the heart of that story and and he's Shakespeare's gayest character.
The chemistry is killing
He kidded Zegler for her rabbit-shaped purse. “I find that quite alarming,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”
“Don’t be weird,” Zegler said.
More Broadway Romeo and Juliet pre-production publicity in the Times, plus a piece on rethinking classics.
Poor Paris
Paris in Romeo and Juliet never gets his due. Even when played by someone as profoundly adorable as 1990s-era Paul Rudd, he’s always an afterthought – Romeo’s metaphorical and often literal understudy. The only redemption in this deeply thankless role is a brief but potentially awesome fight scene at Juliet’s tomb.
Yes, I’ve seen productions that quickly cut his throat and threw him in a corner to lie there for 236 lines, but there’s a least *a chance* that he will die nobly and the actor will get some fight choreo. Not so in the ART R&J:
Better luck next time.
The Romeo train goes through the Montague Tunnel
There are all these subway tunnels connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, right? One of them is called the Montague Tunnel. Presumably not named after the family in Romeo and Juliet. No, it gets its name from the street that it runs underneath once it reaches Brooklyn, which is Montague Street. So, in New York, the subway lines, they just have a letter or a number. You know, the A train, the B train…Well, they do the phonetic alphabet. So, train crews on the R train call themselves Romeos, and train crews on the J train call themselves Juliets. And the R train goes through the Montague Tunnel. There are tracks which would allow the J and Z trains to also use the Montague Tunnel, but they aren't used in passenger service. They both terminate just before the entrance to the tunnel. So, Juliet never gets to join Romeo through the Montague Tunnel.
On the “No Such Thing as a Fish” podcast. Listen to Episode 548 here.
If Shakespeare Were an Auntie
There is a South-Asian Shakespeare-inspired rom-com trilogy called “If Shakespeare were an Auntie.”
The series came about before the pandemic began. And my husband and I were living in two separate cities, we were still dating, and I had gone to visit him in DC, and we went to the Folger library, which is the largest private collection of Shakespeare folios. And we took a tour and one of the tour guides said, “What’s really interesting about Shakespeare’s folios is that he would kind of adjust his story a little bit, depending on the audience.”
So I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be interesting if I took these beats that Shakespeare’s laid out and push it through the South Asian experience? And so you know, there were there were the three rom-coms that each of the books is inspired by. So Dating Dr. Dil is inspired by Taming of the Shrew; Tastes like Shakkar is inspired by Much Ado About Nothing, and then Marriage & Masti is inspired by Twelfth Night.
Pepys Hates Twelfth Night, Sees it Three Times
It was a banner week for Shakespeare in chronological newsletters. First, Samuel Pepys saw Twelfth Night on Wednesday, September 11 of 1661.
Mr. Moore and I out again, he about his business and I to Dr. Williams: to talk with him again, and he and I walking through Lincoln’s Fields observed at the Opera a new play, “Twelfth Night” was acted there, and the King there; so I, against my own mind and resolution, could not forbear to go in, which did make the play seem a burthen to me, and I took no pleasure at all in it; and so after it was done went home with my mind troubled for my going thither, after my swearing to my wife that I would never go to a play without her.
Sam didn’t have a great time, possibly because he wasn’t watching Shakespeare’s original play but rather playwright William Davenant’s adaptation of Twelfth Night. Davenant spread the rumor that he was William Shakespeare’s bastard son and adapted several of his plays, including Measure for Measure, The Tempest, and Macbeth, which he turned into a musical.
No text of Davenant’s “new” Twelfth Night survives, but that may be just as well. Sam saw it two more times, and called it “a silly play” the second time and “one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage” the third. So stop going, Sam!
Garlic Ophelia
The Dracula Daily substack continues on apace, sending out the book’s events in chronological order. On September 12, Lucy goes to bed draped in garlic garlands by Van Helsing.
Well, here I am to-night, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with "virgin crants and maiden strewments." I never liked garlic before, but to-night it is delightful! There is peace in its smell; I feel sleep coming already. Good-night, everybody.
Comparing yourself to a dead girl covered in flowers (Ophelia also has flowers when she’s alive! You had options!) seems like foreshadowing of the glaringly obvious variety. Fingers crossed (literally) that Lucy makes it out un-dead. Sorry, “alive.”
Quick Links
The run of Midsummer at the Royal Exchange in Manchester was canceled because of “technical issues” / “cast injury” / “concerns about some of the creative decisions that were due to be included in the play.” The production promised “a whirlwind of sweaty dance-offs and drum and bass love anthems, celebrating the vibrant tapestry of Manchester's contemporary rave scene…While the city prepares for a royal wedding four young ravers fight for a future they desire.”
Recommendations
A recipe for prop pies: insulation, air-dried clay, and foam.
Katharine Biggs of Meyers-Briggs fame re-wrote the Yale fight song with lyrics about Carl Jung. (I first heard this on the “Maintenance Phase” podcast and had to run it down.)
An opera composer on directorial vandalism
Why, in all these years, has a director never asked me to sit down and go through the score together, before they begin developing their concept? Why, in all these years, have I been so rarely asked any questions about the composition? Why, if I have attended rehearsals, have I generally been treated as an intruder, as someone disturbing the director’s work? And for the times I wasn’t there, why was I often not contacted until the planned vandalism of my opera was so advanced that the staging had the potential to violate the work’s copyright, and therefore my permission was needed—usually just before the premiere?
There are many good points in this article, however the author identifies himself as the author of “Sycorax (the first part of my diptych on toxic masculinity)” which makes me want to flee for the hills and lock myself in an pine tree.
Russian-funded pay-to-play. (also from VAN magazine, killing it this week)
Immediately following the performance, the musician who played Shor in Dubai two years ago swore that he would never play the composer’s work again. “I did it once for the good money,” he said, “but in and of itself, it’s just too sh*tty.”
David Hare on the National Theatre and his attempt at becoming French.
At one point, I was asked to do a language exam in a roomful of candidates at the French consulate. I wrote back saying perhaps they might think me arrogant, but I’d last submitted to sitting at a school desk with a pen and paper in 1968, and, at my age, I couldn’t face it again. The consular official replied: ‘Don’t worry, a certain arrogance isn’t a bad qualification for French citizenship.’