Month: October 2005

Scooby Doo Meets Hamlet. And I would have, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!

I want somebody to do Hamlet in the style of Clue. “It was King Claudius, in the garden, with the lead pipe!”

In my morning’s browsing I found this excellent (and positive!) review of Luhrmann’s famous Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps I should say “infamous” as there are plenty of purists out there that would take the Zeffirelli version over this one anyday. This reviewer, however, reminds us just how good a movie this is (as opposed to how exact an interpretation) by pointing out the homage to classic spaghetti Westerns, John Woo, and Shakespeare’s other works scattered throughout the movie (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Hot Dogs”?)

I’ve always been a believer that whatever it takes to make Shakespeare accessible to the masses — without sacrificing the original! — is worth encouraging. If Leonardo DiCaprio screaming his lines at John Leguizamo is what it takes, then so be it. At least they’re not rapping.

This review makes me want to watch it again. What more can you ask from a review?

Tags: Shakespeare

I found the Puck Building’s entry on Wikipedia this morning in my batch of Shakespeare links. I recognize the place from the opening of tv show Will and Grace (which is noted in the article, gotta love Wikipedia). But I never knew it was supposed to be Puck. Guess I never really pictured him in that sort of hat.

Tags: Shakespeare

3 hour play too long for the attention span of your typical 11-15 year old? Wish Merchant of Venice was about 30 minutes instead? Better call in Tom Stoppard to make it happen. A BBC documentary follows the staging of Stoppard’s shortened play by the National Youth Theatre.

Oh, great. Falstaff wrote the plays? The new book “The Truth Will Out” claims that Sir Henry Neville, nicknamed “Falstaff”, was the real brains behind the operation.

The “evidence” described is just painful:

* Neville’s ancestors (Edward III and John of Gaunt) are described with such accuracy that they could only have been written by someone with special knowledge.

* Neville had acecss to a letter about the Bermuda Shipwreck of 1609, “thought to have” inspired The Tempest.

* the plays could only have been written by someone deeply familiar with court life.

Yeah, that makes me want to run out and get that one. Real groundbreaking stuff, there. Aren’t points 1 and 3 basically the same thing? Could I sum them up as “They’re just so good, it’s impossible for Shakespeare to have written them!” Is that evidence?