Twelfth Night

Last night Pooteewheet and I went to Twelfth Night at the Guthrie.  Her parents were out of town and gifted us their tickets.  I strongly recommend the play.  The cast was great.  The set was exceptional and they used a mixture of raised metal rigging, hanging items (like a swing), slatted wood platforms, and water.  All those differences in material meant that when they were moving there were different noises going on so the usual silences in a Shakespeare production were hurried along by constant noise.  Parts of it were put to song as well, further keeping the pace brisk.

Acting direction was exceptional, and they did an amazing amount of characterization and interpretation of the lines using body language.  Twelfth is one of my favorite plays and they certainly did it justice.  It's been a long time since I was at an "upscale" theater in Minneapolis (well, outside touring plays like Waitress and Six (the musical) and it was a real treat what they can do with a lot of money and talent behind a classic.

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.

Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Bryson's book on Shakespeare was enjoyable.  His purpose was to cover what could be said for certain about Shakespeare and, he admitted, there's very little of that and much more about what we don't know and what was erroneously reported as fact over the centuries. I suspect I'll read a few other books in the Eminent Lives series as well.

Rather than go into any great detail, I'll quote a few of the more amusing, disturbing, and interesting passages.

"One variation was to put a chimpanzee on the back of a horse and let the dogs go for both together.  The sight of a screeching ape clinging for dear life to a bucking horse while dogs leaped at it from below was considered about as rich an amusement as public life could offer.  That an audience that could be moved to tears one day by a performance of Doctor Faustus could return the next to the same space and be just as entertained by the frantic deaths of helpless animals may say as much about the age as any single statement could." [72].

For a friend who wondered why anyone might still want to learn Latin:
"Yet curiously English was still struggling to gain respectability.  Latin was still the language of official documents and of serious works of literature and learning.  Thomas More's Utopia, Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, and Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica were all in Latin.  The Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1605 possessed almost six thousand books.  Of these, just thirty-six were in English.  Attachment to Latin was such that in 1568 when one Thomas Smith produced the first textbook on the English language, he wrote it in Latin." [115]

On James I.  Not the account I ever read during college history courses, either British or Scandinavian, and I had both:
"James was not, by all accounts, the most visually appealing of fellows.  He was graceless in motion, with a strange lurching gait, and  had a disconcerting habit, indulged more or less constantly, of playing with his codpiece.  His tongue appeared to be too large for his mouth.  It "made him drink very uncomely," wrote one contemporary, "as if eating his drink." His only concession to hygiene, it was reported, was to daub his fingertips from time to time with a little water.  It was said one could identify all his meals since becoming king from the stains and gravy scabs on his clothing, which he wore "to very rags."  His odd shape and distinctive waddle were exaggerated by his practice of wearing extravagantly padded jackets and pantaloons to protect himself from assassins' daggers...James and his brother-in-law, King Christian IV of Denmark, undertook a "drunken and orgiastic progress" through the stately homes of the Thames Valley, with Christian at one point collapsing "smeared in jelly and cream." [133-134].

All's Well That Ends Well

We had a busy weekend.  Saturday, we went to the Mall of America to use up two Nick Amusement Park ride bracelets that my mother had gotten as part of her holiday shopping.  There was only a week left to use them - less as the month ends early - so we didn't have time left to find a friend to go with Eryn.  Instead, it was up to me to ride all the rides.  Once upon a time, this wouldn't have been so bad.  Now it involves giant rotating seats on enormous skateboards, flipping seats with joy sticks to old them perpetually upside down, and the various rides that plunge and twirl.  I was feeling a bit uneasy in the stomach by the time we were done, and it wasn't because of the overwhelming smell of rancid seafood we'd been subjected to in the ramp on the way in.

Sunday we went to Republic in Dinkytown for brunch (excellent hanger steak) to use a coupon Theatre in the Round had provided with our flex tickets.  Good plan on Republic's part, as we obviously used the incentive before the play.  I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd really watched a lot of Shakespeare, so it entirely slipped my mind that we were in for 3.5 hours of play.  While definitely not my favorite play, it was enjoyable.  Eryn liked the parts that were grown up, with Lavatch the clown making rude thrusting and hand gestures, and Parolles extolling at some length about how Helena's virginity was a waste. Eryn commented that Parolles was the easiest character to understand, likely because his character, who seemed to be some pervier, more obnoxious, evil, version of Percy from BlackAdder, had shorter lines and much more facial and body language than the other characters.  Helena, who looked and sounded like Katie Holmes, was good, although sort of whiny overall.  And it was impossible to believe that despite tricking her husband, Bertram, into giving her proof of marriage and getting her pregnant, she'd want anything to do with such a turd.  Wikipedia says the exact same thing: "Helena's love for the seemingly unlovable Bertram is difficult to explain on the page."  When my wife called out how unbelievable it was that anyone would stay with Bertram, it kicked my old Shakespeare/Boccacio brain cells into use, and I said if it wasn't that they were supposed to be somewhat attracted to each other the whole time - playful in the beginning and touching heads later - it was probably the idea that a clever woman, or clever behavior, could make him have a bit of an epiphany that made him love her, at least in early modern magical thinking (and particularly in the spirit of the Decameron).  I was excited to see Wikipedia agreed: "Some suggest that Bertram's conversion is meant to be sudden and magical in keeping with the 'clever wench performing tasks to win an unwilling higher born husband' theme of the play."

It's probably also why there's a lengthy scene where the soldiers trick Parolles into confessing to all his obnoxious opinions about others and his own behavior.  To offset the clever women duping men, you have to have equally clever men duping men so there's no suspicion women have the upper hand overall.

What I was reminded of, more than anything, was that I shouldn't avoid my old habit of reading the play before I attend the play.  It's easier to pay attention to the intricacies of the language if you don't have to pay quite as much attention to the ebb and flow of the plot.  And despite the bawdy parts, it was fun to take Eryn to her first Shakespeare.

A Rose by Any Other Name

I had a dream last night about a someone giving me a black mamba, a poisonous snake, as a pet. Later it turned into a boy, but he was obviously still a poisonous snake. Then into an attractive woman, but still obviously a poisonous snake. And then into a puppy, but still obviously a poisonous snake.

As near as I can figure it, this is the result of a.) watching a show about an exterminator on a science channel who was dealing with lots of poisonous snakes and b.) having a discussion about Shakespeare with Eryn that evolved from discussing biting one's thumb, to her teapot from Stratford on Avon, to a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Apparently a poisonous snake by any other name and/or form would be as snakey.