Richard III - Theatre in the Round

We went to Richard III at Theatre in the Round not so long ago (next up, The Magic Garden).  It's one of my favorites because I studied the Tudors for almost five years as an undergrad and the liminal between Richard III and Henry VII and the changes to the government were fascinating.  So this sits right on the start of what I studied.  It usually feels like one of the most accessible plays to me as well.  How difficult is to understand a piece of propaganda where the main character is pretty much a total dick.  That translates in action, if not in language.  Eryn picked up most of it, and she's not a big fan of Shakespeare at TiTR.  Guy kills all his relatives, marries their wives, wants to marry his niece (this skeeved Eryn the most).

It helps to have all the history and know that it's a piece of Tudor propaganda.  Sure there were humps and nefarious deeds, but history is written by the victor.  Even more so if you're trying to back up a claim to a crown you're not really queued up for.

Lucas Gerstner (you work at Imation in your free time, Lucas?  That's cool) as Richard III was extremely good and really captured the conniving nature of the character in his tone and action.  He really made the play.

And Tyrrel and Ratcliffe as sort of hipster/Portlandesque assassins played by Daniel Vopava and Matthew Englund?  That was a good touch. They had solid, semi-sniveling, do-what-we're-told, lackey vibe.

Richard III - Again?

Coincidence is weird. I see what looks to be Clarence drowning in his butt of malmsey in our bathtub (that butt's for you, PrincessMax), and within a few hours of reading The Eyre Affair (alt, Amazon), the Swindon actors are putting on Richard III in what amounts to Rocky Horror Picture Show style. Now today, I'm reading the second Jasper Fforde Thursday Next novel, Lost in a Good Book (alt, Amazon), and much of it centers on coincidence and decreasing entropy fields. Must be one around here somewhere.

I bought The Eyre Affair at Uncle Hugo's bookstore at the same time I purchased The Blue Fairy book for Eryn just because it was on the staff recommendation shelf, and I'm a sucker for a book someone else recommends as long as I can be fairly certain that it isn't about a beseiged warrior queen who may have to choose between her kingdom or true love. That's not a real book, by the way, but the fact that it seems like a plot you may have read or read about assures you that it's a peril to be avoided. At the time I had no idea it was part of a series, but I enjoyed the first one enough to find the other two at Half Price books (there may be three, but only two were in the Half Price paperback section). It reads part science fiction, part fantasy, part literary snobbishness, and approaches its story more like Harry Potter or Discworld than anything else, just throwing out haphazzard story ideas and pulling them back in with abandon, many of them just to liven up the story and non-integral to the overall plot - rather, just crazy local color in a world that revolves around literature. Examples? Wales as a sort of communist, separatist state, the idea of Great Britain ceding a single town in Kent to the Russians as war reparations, and the aforementioned Rocky Horror-esque production, complete with the audience chanting litany responses at the stage.

As a particular, I liked this quote in chapter 16. For some reason it reminds me of Klund:

"...The finest criminal mind requires the finest accomplices to accompany him. Otherwise, what's the point? I always found that I could never apply my most deranged plans without someone to share and appreciate them. I'm like that. Very generous..." Acheron Hades, --Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit

He asked for malmsey

Lest there be any doubt that I was originally an English Lit./English History dual major, this scene Eryn staged in the bathtub reminded me of the Duke of Clarence's death in a vat of malmsey in Richard III. I realize that gives Richard III two humps instead of just one, but that just makes him seem all the more evil.