Agatha Christie, Willy Loman, and Faerie Smut
Plus: "The dog will be handled by a tall, male actor who is wearing a hat"
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Romeo and Juliet reviews. (more) (on star Shakespeare)
After the couple’s tragic demise, three more performers take the stage, representing an older Romeo and Juliet and a daughter, allowing us to glimpse the life they might have had.
Thank you to the folks who wrote in about Drunk vs. Sh!tfaced Shakespeare. The consensus seems to be that Sh!tfaced is UK-based and the parent/original of Drunk, which is US-based and possibly “a ripoff”? Also meaningful. Still curious.
The history of Faerie Smut™ goes through Midsummer. (more) (fairies, not smut)
…many productions emphasise the fairies' erotic potential. A 1999 RSC production directed by Michael Boyd was so sexually charged that a school party left at the interval.3
Oh, I have so many thoughts about the performative girlboss aesthetic of this.4
Shakespearean Six-Sevens and and Giddy Minds via Good Tickle Brain.
“Macbeth” is not merely a play about ambition. It is about a man who catches sight of a possible future and mistakes that glimpse for a license to force events to conform to his interpretation — and then watches that interpretation devour him. Soon he ceases even to pretend that action should wait on understanding…Modern targeting systems promise the same fantasy in technological form…
Production/reading roundup: R&J and Joni, a new musical, Hamletta & Twelfth Bro, Out, Darn Spot!, Richard III: A Twisted Fairy Tale, “A queer take on a Shakespearean classic,” “Fakespeakeare,” Midsummer at OSF, Complete Works, La Plaza Hamlet (more), and Mugen-Noh Othello in the Biennale. (more)
Bate on Bloom. via Jonathan Bate
…the notion that he single-handedly invented the art of self-discovery through dramatic monologue is grossly condescending to his predecessors in the imaginative exploration of the human condition…
Related: The Globe Research team has joined Reddit. (More of this please.)
Free books! Shakespeare and the Staging of Exile + Shakespeare and the Senses.
“Hamlet’s ‘majestical roof fretted with golden fire’ was King’s chapel roof…” (past)
Agatha Christie and Shakespeare via The Common Reader.
The way she writes about Macbeth in The Pale Horse, which I think is a really underrated novel, including thoughts on how it should be staged, which are really interesting and very, very good.
“…a 16-year-old has somehow perfected ‘Put out the light and then put out the light.’”
“The dog will be handled by a tall, male actor who is wearing a hat, so it’s important that we check in to make sure that’s going to be okay for the dog…”
“One might say that Hamlet is having a moment were it not for the fact that Hamlet often seems to be having a moment.”
Nikitin’s Hamlet. (2016) via Natasha Tripney
Volkov played Claudius and the Ghost brilliantly. He died suddenly and we played the last performance without him, in his honor…We had filmed one show, so we had a recording of his voice and even his footsteps on stage. So we played that last show without Volkov but with the sound of his voice and footsteps. A couple of times we projected his face on a screen, but nothing more. And his final exit was the sound of his feet as he left. That was an astonishing show. I’ve never heard such silence in a theater.
Recommendations
Like this one.
Why is there so much Shakespeare on an internet chicken show? is an excellent question I plan to answer.
There’s much to discuss here. Word choice for a start.
A teacher, Stephen McGaw, marched his pupils out of the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon after watching a man dressed as a donkey simulating sex with Titania, Queen of the Fairies. ‘The production has really driven a horse and carriage through our school religious education and sex education policies,’ said Mr McGaw.
Buy better books. One suggestion.
Re: Why are Juliets better than the Romeos? I think it's that women actors at every level are, by and large, better than men, because they have had to go through so much more competition to get there.
At every level, there are way more female actors competing for way fewer roles. So your best young male actor and your best young female actor are not the best individuals in comparable pools.