Shakespeare-ing it

We arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon on Sunday, and I'm staying at a lovely little B&B just outside the main part of town. The town isn't that big, and you can walk from one end of it to the other in under 20 minutes really.

Sorry that it's taken me so long to update--my computer has been having some issues (the "blue screen of death" as the mac commercials say), but I think I've at least partially solved them for the moment.

Everything--EVERYTHING--here is about Shakespeare. Seriously, if you didn't love him you'd go crazy in this town. The names of cafes (As You Like It), B&Bs (Twelfth Night; Cymbeline), toy stores (Much Ado About Toys), and liquor stores (Bottom's Up) bombard you with references to Shakespeare's work. This is of course only natural, since Shakespeare is the only big thing to hit here in the past 600 years, and he makes a great tourist attraction, hence the proliferation of "authentic Shakespeare historical sites," like the one-time home of his grand-niece's husband's parents and their dog named Bill. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but really it's a little absurd here, with everyone trying to profit on this literary legacy.

At any rate, I'm enjoying this part of the trip much more than I'd expected to, considering that I'm not the biggest fan of Shakespeare. I think I'd never really considered that there are alternate ways to perform Shakespeare--that you don't necessarily have to do the show precisely as it is written, just as a pure play. However, I'm quite enjoying seeing these other interpretations of it, and the different aspects of the plays that they bring out.

Monday night we saw Romeo & Juliet, which is of course the most overdone Shakespeare show. It's also probably my least favorite Shakespeare play, so you can imagine how excited I was going into it. At any rate, I quite enjoyed it. They framed the story as two feuding families who are getting together to perform the play, which I liked because it put the focus more on the tension between the families, the bigger issues at stake, rather than the supposed romance between the 13 year old Juliet and the flighty wimpy Romeo. Instead of sword fights, the actors did a sort of tap-flamenco dance hybrid and swung quarterstaffs around, which sounds weird but was actually quite intriguing. They also had a very clever balcony scene involving a ladder tower with Juliet in a precarious position at the top. Some thought this allowed too much contact between the two lovers, but I really enjoyed the effect of it all. So at any rate, the show impressed me, and that is impressive.

Tuesday morning we discussed the play and Sorcha Cusack, who played a delightful Nurse in R&J, visited our class and talked about the production with us. She was refreshingly honest about facets she objected to (one fine example: a little girl wearing bunny ears which had no discernible purpose in the play) and the process they went through with the show. Quite fascinating.

Tuesday night we saw an extremely, er, “creative” version of Cymbeline, which used virtually none of Shakespeare’s language, but did involve music, graffiti, and a drag queen! I actually really enjoyed it. The people who went in expecting to see Shakespeare’s Cymbeline were understandably disappointed, but Cymbeline really isn’t one of my favorite plays so I had no great expectations going in.

Wednesday evening’s performance of The Tempest was definitely my favorite Stratford moment thus far, and not only because PATRICK STEWART was playing Prospero. Did you hear that? I SAW PATRICK STEWART LIVE IN A ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION!!!!!!!!!!! No really you have no idea how amazing that was.

However, I also really loved the concept. They set it in the arctic, instead of the traditional tropical island, and the entire production was very dark, somber, and ethereal. Nothing like the show we did at Furman. To me there isn’t even a comparison between the two. This show focused intently on the relationship between Prospero and Ariel, and made that relationship very tense, with a tangible power struggle in the air. Very cold, desolate—it was a concept that completely pulled me into the story in a way a more outwardly energetic show would not.

The two things I truly despised about the show were a) the storm scene, or lack thereof, and b) the entire portrayal of Miranda. The storm scene consisted of a big radio projection with a cutout in one of the speakers showing a tiny space supposedly inside the ship, where the actors delivered their lines without the slightest bit of frenzy or confusion, and were jolted by waves at completely different times. Obviously a complete lack of direction in that scene, and it turned out to be a potentially interesting idea that did not work at all. Regarding Miranda, I think the idea was to show how growing up without socialization can make you awkward, but she just turned out completely stiff and weird. The worst part was that she was not only awkward around the strangers, but around her own father, who is the only person she has known for her entire life, so that bit seemed inappropriate to me.

Some of our group despised the show and made it very clear that they thought it was hideous. I think these were also the people who secretly wanted to see a reflection of our own production, so I can see why the idea was a problem for them. However today’s discussion was not the bloodbath I was anticipating, which gives me hope.

Speaking of bloodbaths, tonight’s by-the-book production of Julius Caesar involved the murderers literally bathing in Caesar’s blood, which is truly disgusting when you’re sitting in the third row and somewhat concerned that you will be stained red by theatre blood. I did not enjoy tonight’s production nearly as much as the others, although the actor playing Mark Antony was brilliant. This show was exactly what you would expect when you read the play, except with much less of a set and visual interest (anyone who knows me will understand that the lack of visual interest is a problem). I would much rather see a play taken in a new direction that I had not considered and explore what that interpretation brings out, but this show offered no such intrigue for me. Not to say that it was a bad show at all—I found the murder scene most compelling—but it was not my cup of tea (which by the way LaurenFrances I have been drinking an awful lot of).

Well, it is 12:40 am here so I am going to go to bed. No play tomorrow, hooray for a break! I will have to do laundry tomorrow afternoon though, which I am not looking forward to—it’s quite expensive and the washers are tiny.

Cheers from the girl with piles of dirty clothes because England is much too exciting to waste time in a laundromat!