Month: April 2011

So, there’s a group performing Much Ado About Nothing on Facebook next week. I’m not quite sure what this means, although I am sure that I do not have time to follow 30 fictional characters and then watch the proceedings go by on my Wall. Still, though, it’s a curious idea. Is this really a performance of the play, or is this another one of those “walk through the story with a modern twist” things that last year’s mediocre Such Tweet Sorrow gave us when they promised Romeo and Juliet on Twitter?
Took a brief look at the chatter going on pre-show, and it appears to mostly be the latter. This stuff may appeal to a generation younger than mine who live and breathe Facebook status updates, but I’m just not feeling it.

What happens when you put an Oscar-nominated Shakespearean in charge of the next movie in the Marvel comics franchise? Apparently you get a pretty awesome movie.
We all know the name Kenneth Branagh, whether you love him for his Hamlet, his Henry or even his Much Ado or Othello. But comic book movies? That’s a switch. And, it seems, a good one.

“He has said there are elements in it that are like The Tempest or Twelfth Night,” he said. “Thor is certainly not a typical Kenneth Branagh film — but you can see how he has brought his experience to bear.“All the inhabitants of Asgard, the fantasy land in the film, speak with clipped drama school accents which Branagh has obviously coached them in.

…

“He’s definitely about character, which is the quintessential trait you have to have to understand the Marvel characters,” he said. “It’s not just big hammers and capes and things like that. It’s about what makes the character tick.”

Personally I’ve never been a big fan of the Thor comic – I don’t even really fully understand the backstory. I mean, is he a super hero or a god? My daughter studied mythology in school and whenever she connected Thor the god with Thor the superhero she was all, “Oh come on, Daddy, he’s a *god*, how can he not be the most powerful one of them all??” I always liked the interpretation that he’s a somewhat less-than-sane mortal who just thinks that he’s Thor. Given that Anthony Hopkins plays Odin in the movie, I don’t think that’s the interpretation they’re going with.
What do you think? Will a heavy dose of character development improve the latest comic movie offering? Or will an emphasis on character over action kill it for the summer blockbuster fans? How much Shakespeare do you think Branagh really brought to it?

I’m sure I’ve posted about this before, but sometimes it’s fun to dust off the old stuff. How many of you find yourself responding to random daily events in Shakespeare quotes? I’ll often spring the title quote on my wife when accused of something.
“And whose empty Diet Coke can is this sitting on the table?”
“Shake not thy gory locks at me, woman! Thou canst not say I did it!”
My kids have grown up with this, of course. They know to just roll their eyes and move on. Although I still think that morning last month where the milk was expiring on March 15 and I bid them beware the Ides of Milk is still one of my greatest puns to date. 🙂

This question has come up in the past, and I’ve often seen it appear on people’s bucket lists: read the complete works of William Shakespeare.
I open up for discussion the question of whether this is a worthy goal. Keep in mind that, at least in this particular instance, I am not talking about a life long goal of experiencing every play, or otherwise diving deep. I’m talking about getting yourself a Complete Works, starting on page one, and then reading cover to cover and calling it done. Saying you did it, in other words. A checkbox on ye olde bucket list.
Although my answer has probably changed over the years, right now the answer is “No. Don’t do this.”
I’ve done it. I can answer in the affirmative if the question ever comes up. Now ask me my opinions on Measure for Measure or All’s Well That Ends Well and I’ll ask, “Which one was that again?” and struggle to remember even the barest of the plot. I’ve not seen them, either on video or live. I didn’t study them in school. So my retention for most of them is just terrible. Probably because there was no reason to retain it.
I’ve known people who set it as a goal to *see* all of the plays. Depending on where you’re at and what resources are available to you, this is a project that could take a great deal of time, travel and money. But for each play you’ll have the memories to go with it – how you got there, what the circumstances were, what sort of troupe it was, etc… – and those things will help lock it in your memory. I’ve seen The Tempest 3 times, and I can tell you vivid memories from every show.
Ask yourself why you want to do it – whether it’s for the accomplishment of saying you did it, or if it’s out of a true desire to experience every bit of Shakespeare that you can. Because if it’s the latter, well, you’re not even scratching the surface if you just read the book and call it done.

Watching a bit of Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth yesterday, I was reminded of something I don’t like about the Porter’s scene. Whoever is at the door knocks *10* times. That’s an awful lot of knocking. If you were at somebody’s front door, you’d almost certainly give up before knocking 10 times. I realize that this is a castle, not a house, and that someone is surely home and just needs to wake up. That doesn’t change the fact that the amount of knocking is jarring to me, it takes me away from the scene and makes me think “Somebody answer the damn door!”
Here’s what came to me, though. The Macbeths hear 4 knocks before exiting, and then the porter hears 6. But what if the first knock that the Macbeths hear is really the same first knock that that the porter hears? They are almost certainly in two different parts of the castle, after all. See what I’m saying? What if these two scenes actually take place simultaneously? It’s a common enough trick and you’ve probably seen it in any number of novels: one chapter shows you that a situation has changed unexpectedly, and then the next chapter, written from a different character’s perspective, goes back in time a little bit and shows you how that character caused the change in whatever situation.
How might such a technique play out on stage? Could you even attempt to put both the Macbeths and the porter on stage at the same time, or would they step on each other’s lines? If you don’t, though, how do you explain that this is not a sequential series of events, but a simultaneous one?