Panto, Demonic Mushrooms, and Shakespeare in Space
December Shakespeare News
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December Shakespeare News
As promised, December’s roundup is below and new news tomorrow. If you are near NYC, come to a reading of Timon of Athens I’m directing for The Acting Company.
Quick Links
Andrew Scott to play Ian Charleson in new film “Elsinore.”3 (more)
Elsinore centres on the period during which Charleson was preparing to play Hamlet at the National Theatre. Famously, Charleson, though seriously ill from AIDS, was brought in to the production after Daniel Day-Lewis abandoned the production, and garnered rave reviews. He died less than two months later…
“He thought he was adapting The Tempest. Then the memory of a demonic mushroom trip intruded” via Exeunt
Of all the plays I’ve written, I’ll Be the Devil is one of my favourites. Inspired by The Tempest, it’s a violent exploration of English occupation in Ireland during the eighteenth century – a sort of psychotic lovechild of Barry Lyndon and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“What panto taught me about how to stage Shakespeare” Or, “I realized I’m the kind of director who sees a pre-existing text and wants to kick the sh*t out of it” also via Exeunt
There’s a new musical Henry V + Crispin Crispianus in “Percy Jackson”
This party boi trashbag is about to break history…witness the glow up as Sweet Henry V (it’s pronounced Vee, actually) transforms from playboy prince to the most famous warrior king in British history. All he has to do is defeat the douchebag Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr…We’re talking Hamilton meets Braveheart meets Priscilla Queen of Desert…
Paul Rudd lied about playing Hamlet directed by Ben Kingsley.
After 46 years, it is time to get a new Bottom head. (“It’s kind of sad and scary in there.”) The bear, however, can stay.
Garry Hynes is directing Macbeth with Marie Mullen4 as Lady M and Marty Rea as Macbeth. I don’t think I’ve never seen either a 70+ Lady or one significantly older than the Lord. Should be a sight to see.
“I do think there’s a clear difference between a production of As You Like It where the entire cast includes Queer and Trans actors to highlight the ridiculousness of gender roles and heteronormative relationships within the context of a play that is already doing so versus a production of Hamlet set on the Titanic, because the director thought it would be cool.5” via From Behind the Table.
The RSC cut their in-house musicians and plans to cut total staff by 11%.
The Edward IV roll is now online, supported by the American Branch of the Richard III society.6
“Hamlet & Juliet is a wry, gothic, Shakespeare-inspired romantasy in which the brooding Prince Hamlet and the inexplicably resurrected Juliet must thwart a dark conspiracy threatening the Globe.”
An Othello for Hallamas + “Shaxberd” as one of “the Poets who mayd the plaies.”
“I am as constant as the Northern star.” (Literally. Sort of.)
“Design and Discomfort: Teaching Shakespeare and Race” is open source + free.
Emma Smith on Henry VIII and Romeo and Juliet.
Bee Wilson on her mother’s (Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan Jones) toast rack. (paywall, worth quoting at length)
Toast was something that was my mother’s breakfast for decades, along with strong coffee and pears and cheese. And she always put the toast in a toast rack…The fact that my mother, who was a brilliant Shakespeare scholar, was so attached to her toast rack was a throwback to my grandmother, who was always trying to come across as more posh than she really was and hide her humble background. Her toast rack was a very important personal monument. I think it told her who she was; or who she aspired to be.
One day, she informed me and my youngest son that a thief had stolen her valuable silver-plated toast rack and that she had reported it to the police…At the time, all of us in the family found a dark humour in the story of the toast rack thief but it was also sad because we eventually realised this was the kind of paranoia that people sometimes get when they are in the early stages of dementia.…By the time we moved her to a care home in the city where I live, she had forgotten all about the silver toast rack, just as she soon forgot the names of her daughter and grandchildren and even of Shakespeare, to whom she had devoted a lifetime of scholarship.
In the care home, they served her white toast and marmalade and she did not seem to mind that they served it without a toast rack or without the pear she had always eaten at home. About a year before she died we went to clear her house and my sister was the one who found the toast rack at the very back of a cupboard.
Recommendations
Like this one.
Of note: this production fails the “bring me the foils” test aka, when it is a modern production, and Hamlet asks for the foils, does someone bring him [that] or [something else]. When the most recent RSC Hamlet asked for a foil, he was handed a saber. This National Hamlet has an epee. Y’all. There are three modern fencing weapons: saber, epee, and foil. It offends me to the very soul to use every one except the one that’s in the text. At least the gear looks good (Leon Paul is proving to be the go-to for Hamlets with budgets) and this exchange is delightful:
In épée fencing, any part of the body is a target.
Could it be something ridiculous like his foot?
It could!
Epee is a silly sword. Also: is Hamlet’s Blockbuster t-shirt an Ethan Hawke reference? (There are other past Hamlets on the walls.)
If you haven’t seen “Chariots of Fire” go do that now. Also stars Nicholas Farrell who is Branagh’s Horatio and Montano.
The original Maureen in Beauty Queen, she came back to the play as Mag in 2017.
I’ve had a soft spot for the roll for a while.
That Hamlet story is so angry-making. It's not funny. It's not acceptable. It's not a mistake. FFS.