Pedro Pascal, Fine Leather Goods, and the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Festival

Plus: The inherent capaciousness of salad

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There will be a daily newsletter Monday-Friday this week.

• Please enjoy Pedro Pascal playing with puppies and quoting Polonius. (more Shakespeare puppies)

• Thank you to every single person who sent me the Romeo and Juliet cat.

• A parent in Idaho lost her formal challenge to have this Midsummer removed from the fifth-grade curriculum.

  The story, according to the complaint, includes premarital sex and forced marriage. Also, a character asked a man to treat her like a dog, another woman was ridiculed for her body shape, and a character tried to use a love potion to force someone to love him. “These ideas and attitudes should not be introduced to students who are this young and impressionable,” the complaint states.

• We could have had a Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Festival.

  Edith Sitwell, who remarked that “in repose her face was at moments strangely, prophetically tragic, like the face of a beautiful ghost. A little spring-ghost, an innocent fertility daemon, the vegetation spirit that was Ophelia.” In fact, Monroe had hankered for this role along with, at various points, those of Juliet and Lady Macbeth; read Cordelia opposite Anton Chekhov’s nephew Michael as Lear in an acting class; and even dreamed of mounting a Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Festival.

• Books roundup: Greg Doran’s Walking Shadow, “the Margaret book” (more), a Bard on the Beach bio (more), an OSF conquering-the-canon chronicle, Queer Shakespeare and The Bard in the Borderlands Volume 3 (both open access), Based on a True Story, “Meet Puck: the nonbinary, thirty-year-old mastermind behind Homewreckers…” (more).

• Emma Rosa Went on As You Like It.

  On Monday night, as Oskar and I were talking about that 2007 production of Midsummer, I reminded him that he had said he’d send me a last notes email after our second preview for As You and he never did. He replied, “well we’ve been kinda busy, but I’m still gonna email you.” I protested that the rehearsal period is over and I have no time to make any more changes, and he said, “Oh I know, I’m just interested in the conversation.” Me too, dude. Me too, wherever it goes.

• It is worth watching all the clips of this interview with outgoing Stratford AD Antoni Cimolino. Highlights:

  “…in the theater we are treated often as children by people who are hedge fund managers or bankers because like we like to play and we’re artists and we’ve sort of had an arrested development…there’s always this sense that people in the theater really can’t be grownups, they can’t be responsible. And yet, we set a schedule 18 months ahead of time, and on that Thursday night, the 4th of November at 8:00 we will have a show on.

  • “It all works if you’ve done your work. And if you haven’t done your work, then it’s all shit.”

  • On fight choreo: “…how do we make sure that people aren’t in genuine danger but can always play in a way that stinks of life.”

  • On killing a laugh, designing time, knowing your weaknesses, auteurs, two versions of “that’s too long for a play”, and setting the set on fire.

• Alan Cumming thinks Scotland needs more Shakespeare. (such as)

• Johnna Champion on Charlotte Cushman and barbies.

• What does “salad days” actually mean?

  Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Names” opens with a metaphor that speaks to the inherent capaciousness of salad.

• Montana Shakespeare in the Parks cameos in a Jonathan Franzen story.

  Bromley added a performance the following Saturday night and, without telling Adele, invited a V.I.P. from Bozeman—the artistic director of Montana’s new Shakespeare in the Parks program. After the show, the director asked Bromley to convey to Adele an invitation to audition for that summer’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

• San Francisco Shakes is selling off Antony and Cleopatra props before the production opens. (more)

• Props to the folks making trailers over at OSF.²

• A collaboration between the Folger and a stationery company. (Folio washi tape!)

• The RSC has a new sock and fine leather goods partner. (treat yo self)

• Charles II uses the discovery (maybe) of the Princes in the Tower to dissuade dissent. via Elizabeth St.John.

  Sermons were delivered. People observed a period of mourning. Shakespeare’s Richard III, a play portraying a usurping, murdering king getting exactly what he deserves, was commissioned for a special production. The message sent could hardly have been clearer: people mourn legitimate kings.

• “The hardest thing for me honestly has been the cardio.” (Puck does get about)

• Early music and the RSC.

  …by then he was collecting his own curtals, crumhorns, shawms and more…

• The Winter’s Tale in the park has a cast.

• “Danny, her best friend, dubs her ‘Lady Disdain’”

• Sadie Sink on Juliet.

• Tanya Reynolds would like a crack at Viola.

• “Such Sweet Thunder” by A. Van Jordan.

• Anti-AI in a Manchester Something Rotten. via Fergus Morgan

• “It is a perfectly acceptable, occasionally thought-provoking and pleasant evening that is unlikely to linger long in the memory.”

• Jessica Stone on The Old Globe.

  [Artistic director] Barry Edelstein gave me the opportunity to direct my first Shakespeare. It was also the first time I directed in the round, and the first time I directed outside. That was a very important training ground for me, and I really fell in love with the San Diego audiences.

• Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens talk Shakespeare.

• Writer/Director Emma Howlett on her Fringe show The Plot. via Fergus Morgan.

  It is about The Gunpowder Plot. It is about what happens when the stories we tell about the world and our place in it fall apart. It is about angry young men with time on their hands and deep dissatisfaction. It is about two brothers who have bet their lives on a plot and are reckoning with the fact that it has not paid off. It is about who has control of the story that will be told about them. And it is about Macbeth.

• This is a wild way to describe Much Ado.

Recommendations

• Shipwreck dresses.

• Brueghel bat behavior.

• A-Corps. via Sarah Calderón.

• “the numbat, the boodie, and Gilbert’s potoroo.”

• Jared Harbour on does the Times still matter.

• Nathan Lane thinks Harvey is the play of the moment.

• Smooshing Starburst onto Baltimore sidewalks for science.

• “One chancer, who was stopped at the Russian border….was found to be carrying 1000 lbs of imported cheese. He valiantly claimed personal use…”

  …neither the cheese nor the buyer was ever seen again. The 950 truckles—roughly the weight of a fully grown whale shark—disappeared without a trace.

  © 2026 Kate Pitt. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

1. Like this one.

2. I’m pretty sure I heard a lightsaber in the mix but please confirm.