Just by way of a diary note for my personal records, really...
We finally got our dose of Cambridge open-air Shakespeare for the year recently, twice. On the 17th of this month, we saw the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in Robinson College gardens. I honestly don't think I've seen a live performance of this one before, and while it was fun, I guess that I can see why not. I can quite believe that this was Shakespeare's first play (as seems to be the current academic best guess); it felt like a sketch towards his later comedy career, or somebody trying to emulate a Shakespeare comedy and not getting it quite right. The production pushed for some broad comedy with the outlaws (all female in this production, presumably purely for practical casting reasons), which didn't quite come off for me. Still, even in early, weak Shakespeare, you can suddenly get a jewel like "Who is Silvia? What is she/That all our swains commend her?" dropping in.
The prototypical nature of Two Gentlemen extends to its having a character action towards the end that probably looked a bit off even when it was written, and is likely to annihilate modern audience sympathies for the character involved entirely. Talking of which... The second part of this accidental duo was The Taming of the Shrew, courtesy of the Globe Theatre company on tour, in the Master's Garden at Corpus Christi (a bit of Cambridge architecture I'd not got into before, come to think of it), on the 23rd of the month. I'd not looked at any reviews of this beforehand, so I didn't know it was going to be an all-female cast in vaguely 1920s costume. Which actually worked rather well, especially for Petruchio, who ended up as a rather dashing roaring girl type in a pilot's coat.
But the casting and costumes didn't really address the modern problem of Kate's last speech. That was handled by having her deliver it 100% straight, but then looking at the male characters' reactions, especially Petruchio's. This turned the end of that scene into a big oops, damn moment, as it seemed to dawn on him and that others that he might have gone too far there. He'd really rather liked the untamed Kate, one felt, and now he'd lost that. From then on, everyone delivered their lines hesitantly, going through the motions and giving the play a complete downer ending. Which is probably as good a solution to that issue as any.
Good music, too, by the way.
Showing posts with label Cambridge Shakespeare Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambridge Shakespeare Festival. Show all posts
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Theatre: Twelfth Night
Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, 28/8/2010
(Note to self; you enjoy Cambridge Shakespeare Festival productions, Philip, so you really should get to them earlier in the year. The last night of the last performance looks like brinkmanship. Fortunately, the weather held, this time.)
And it's back to Robinson College gardens for another comedy - more unambiguously comic than last year's, mind. It's still a nice venue for theatre on a nice evening, although this production doesn't seem quite to have got the hang of working with the space - lines were getting lost in the shrubbery, cast members were trying to interact from too far apart. Still, mostly, they were pretty good. Mind you, I've seen some not-very-similar Violas and Sebastians in my time, but these two really were exceptional - about a foot apart in height, and with no other similarities. Hey ho, accept the theatrical convention.
The director's line here seemed to be that Illyria is almost entirely inhabited by foppish loons - not just Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, Duke Orsino is pretty much as bad. This explains why Olivia isn't very interested in him - she's trying to be a sensible person and is still genuinely in mourning, but none of the aristocratic layabouts around her will be sensible - and why she falls so promptly for Viola/Cesario, who acts moderately seriously as well as being quite charismatic. (This Olivia then flips over into a state of girlish lust, abandoning black like a shot now she's got someone she can be cheerful rather than silly with, but then throwing herself very energetically at the object of her affections, which must be nice for Sebastian when she grabs him but doesn't look very consistent.) However, this then leaves a problem of explaining why the smart Viola should fall for the goofy Orsino... I know, she just does, okay? It's a Shakespeare comedy.
And, to be fair, quite funny in this production - notoriously not always the way with Shakespeare comedies, and not just because of Malvolio's character story (marginalised at the end in a faintly embarrassed way here). The Shakespeare Festival continues to make Shakespeare productions that are worth going to see. Must try to get to it more efficiently next year.
(Note to self; you enjoy Cambridge Shakespeare Festival productions, Philip, so you really should get to them earlier in the year. The last night of the last performance looks like brinkmanship. Fortunately, the weather held, this time.)
And it's back to Robinson College gardens for another comedy - more unambiguously comic than last year's, mind. It's still a nice venue for theatre on a nice evening, although this production doesn't seem quite to have got the hang of working with the space - lines were getting lost in the shrubbery, cast members were trying to interact from too far apart. Still, mostly, they were pretty good. Mind you, I've seen some not-very-similar Violas and Sebastians in my time, but these two really were exceptional - about a foot apart in height, and with no other similarities. Hey ho, accept the theatrical convention.
The director's line here seemed to be that Illyria is almost entirely inhabited by foppish loons - not just Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, Duke Orsino is pretty much as bad. This explains why Olivia isn't very interested in him - she's trying to be a sensible person and is still genuinely in mourning, but none of the aristocratic layabouts around her will be sensible - and why she falls so promptly for Viola/Cesario, who acts moderately seriously as well as being quite charismatic. (This Olivia then flips over into a state of girlish lust, abandoning black like a shot now she's got someone she can be cheerful rather than silly with, but then throwing herself very energetically at the object of her affections, which must be nice for Sebastian when she grabs him but doesn't look very consistent.) However, this then leaves a problem of explaining why the smart Viola should fall for the goofy Orsino... I know, she just does, okay? It's a Shakespeare comedy.
And, to be fair, quite funny in this production - notoriously not always the way with Shakespeare comedies, and not just because of Malvolio's character story (marginalised at the end in a faintly embarrassed way here). The Shakespeare Festival continues to make Shakespeare productions that are worth going to see. Must try to get to it more efficiently next year.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Theatre: Measure for Measure
Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, 21/8/2009
And we finally got to catch a Cambridge Shakespeare Festival production this year, a week before the thing wound down. In Robinson College Gardens, too, which we hadn't seen properly before, and which turn out to be very nice for this sort of thing. And the weather, we earlier in the day, turned nice for the evening, if a little cool by the end...
Okay, the play. One of Shakespeare's more problematic numbers, of course, being technically a comedy but really not funny - this production did its best with the bawdy house inhabitants and other minor parts, but even that wound up being more about the flaws in humanity than about actual humour. The play ends in marriage or marriages, yes, but these are marriages as punishment. (Mind you, I do wonder if the thing worked for Elizabethan English audiences as a huge joke about Catholicism and Catholics, with their wacky un-English obsessions with sin and virginity and confession and absolution and all that. Is the Duke even a Catholic god, or at least a symbol of the Catholic church, all manipulative power and arbitrary forgiveness when it suits him?) It's a tough play to produce by Shakespeare's standards, but interesting.
I guess that the normal response these days is to see it as a story about tyranny and power, with the Duke as an arbitrary manipulator and his brother as a Puritan tyrant. This production, though, took a different line, treating the Duke as a hell of a lot less clever than he thought he was; he fumbled around attempting unsuccessful jokes and unwise tests of other people's attitudes, causing widespread unnecessary pain and really not understanding why Isabella gave him such a dirty look at the end when he tried to propose marriage to her. Angelo, meanwhile, just lacked self-knowledge, hurtling into his appalling behaviour because he didn't have a clue how people worked. Let's face it, this is a horrifically dysfunctional sort of family to have running your country on any terms; in this version, they were downright clueless. Vienna, one felt, was in as much trouble in the long term as in the short.
Technically, this was a punchy presentation, coming it at around two hours including an interval, and even losing one or two of Lucio's sharper lines that often grab the audience's sympathy. This Lucio was shaved bald and wearing white face-paint that made him look part clown, part syphilis victim, and part goblin; definitely one of the bawdy house crew, not a fallible but morally honest everyman. The quasi-comic bawdy house business also involved a leather-aproned, bare-buttocked executioner (just a small part on a cold evening, boom boom), a lot of shouting, and some weird free jazz noises from offstage that didn't help the clarity of the performance. Still, it was Shakespeare on a summer evening, as the shadows drew in and things became colder; Measure for Measure had the way of things all too well.
And we finally got to catch a Cambridge Shakespeare Festival production this year, a week before the thing wound down. In Robinson College Gardens, too, which we hadn't seen properly before, and which turn out to be very nice for this sort of thing. And the weather, we earlier in the day, turned nice for the evening, if a little cool by the end...
Okay, the play. One of Shakespeare's more problematic numbers, of course, being technically a comedy but really not funny - this production did its best with the bawdy house inhabitants and other minor parts, but even that wound up being more about the flaws in humanity than about actual humour. The play ends in marriage or marriages, yes, but these are marriages as punishment. (Mind you, I do wonder if the thing worked for Elizabethan English audiences as a huge joke about Catholicism and Catholics, with their wacky un-English obsessions with sin and virginity and confession and absolution and all that. Is the Duke even a Catholic god, or at least a symbol of the Catholic church, all manipulative power and arbitrary forgiveness when it suits him?) It's a tough play to produce by Shakespeare's standards, but interesting.
I guess that the normal response these days is to see it as a story about tyranny and power, with the Duke as an arbitrary manipulator and his brother as a Puritan tyrant. This production, though, took a different line, treating the Duke as a hell of a lot less clever than he thought he was; he fumbled around attempting unsuccessful jokes and unwise tests of other people's attitudes, causing widespread unnecessary pain and really not understanding why Isabella gave him such a dirty look at the end when he tried to propose marriage to her. Angelo, meanwhile, just lacked self-knowledge, hurtling into his appalling behaviour because he didn't have a clue how people worked. Let's face it, this is a horrifically dysfunctional sort of family to have running your country on any terms; in this version, they were downright clueless. Vienna, one felt, was in as much trouble in the long term as in the short.
Technically, this was a punchy presentation, coming it at around two hours including an interval, and even losing one or two of Lucio's sharper lines that often grab the audience's sympathy. This Lucio was shaved bald and wearing white face-paint that made him look part clown, part syphilis victim, and part goblin; definitely one of the bawdy house crew, not a fallible but morally honest everyman. The quasi-comic bawdy house business also involved a leather-aproned, bare-buttocked executioner (just a small part on a cold evening, boom boom), a lot of shouting, and some weird free jazz noises from offstage that didn't help the clarity of the performance. Still, it was Shakespeare on a summer evening, as the shadows drew in and things became colder; Measure for Measure had the way of things all too well.
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