How about a Rocky Horror Hamlet?  That’s what Chris Barton and the Westminster Theatre Company have put together, and it sounds pretty darned good. I would write more, but I can’t really do a better job than the reviewer, who calls it “both compelling and exciting, one of the best shows I have seen in a while. “  Go check it out.

Wow, the ideas are just flying fast and furious tonight.
Mark made me think of this one on the “Who Would You Be?” post when he mentions Miranda and Ferdinand getting back to Milan and breaking up once Miranda gets to see just how many people this brave new world really does have in it.
You’re in an elevator with a big time movie producer.  You’ve talked his ear off about what plays you think deserve a movie treatment, but he’s not interested. He wants something original. He ponders aloud whether the market would be there for a Shakespeare sequel.  Without missing a beat you pitch him …. what?
Tell us the play, and give us a concise summary of the sequel.
This has been done before.  I’m pretty sure I remember somebody did a play Fortinbras about the new ruler of Denmark who is now haunted by all the ghosts from the previous play.  (I’m not really counting the movie Hamlet 2.)  Somebody’s also got a book project in the works, not sure if there’s a movie, that follows up Macbeth and ties in the storyline of how Fleance (you know, Banquo’s son? who escaped?) returns to become king.

I’m posing this question because I saw it come through my search logs and felt like anchoring it in case anybody else comes around looking for it later. Definition is up to you, I’ll leave this one completely open.  Is it “To be or not to be”? Or is that more cliche than quintessential?

I wish I could think of these conversation starters during the day when everybody’s awake and not at 11pm on a Friday night when everybody’s gone for the weekend. Give your best example of Shakespeare using the same “bit” in multiple plays.  A “bit” is any sequence lengthy enough to be more than coincidence (“Ah me” or “by my troth”, for instance, don’t count). For instance, having heard it again in Much Ado that makes 3 different times I know Shakespeare used this joke: “Is that your daughter?” /  “Her mother told me she was.” Taming of the Shrew. The Tempest (where Prospero says it to his own daughter), and now Much Ado. Possibly more that I just haven’t spotted. This isn’t just “when does Shakespeare repeat a sequence,” but how often can you find where he does it? Can anybody find something that he repeats more than 3 times?

Here’s another open-ended question for discussion over the weekend. I remember being at a party once, back in the college days, playing the “If…” game from that book where everybody was asked a hypothetical question and had to give a truthful answer.  The question was, “If you could be another person for a day, who would you be?” The guys chose Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Gates, among others. When it came to my turn I answered, “My brother, because I’ve lived with him all my life and really have no idea what life looks like from his point of view.”  Everybody, my brother included, found that lame.  Oh, well. So here’s my version of that question : If you could be one Shakespearean character for the duration of the play, who would you be? I don’t mean play the role – I mean pretend that the play is reality and be that character.  When the play ends, or when you die, you turn back into yourself. Part two: There’s a couple different ways to approach this. You could either think that you’ll remain aware of who you really are, and basically wear the character like a puppet, trying to change the play the way you want it to go…or you could take more of a backseat and basically just watch how it plays out with no real control, but a better understanding of why certain things happen.   Make sense? For me I can think only in the second sense – it doesn’t make sense for me to think “change the course of the play.”  I’m trying to think of who I’d be, though, because if this were some sort of funky carnival ride I could see myself getting back in line again and again.  Maybe take Jaques for a spin, see what his deal is. I don’t think I’d feel much need to see what Benedick is all about (getting back to earlier Much Ado discussions), though I might take Prospero out for a drive and see once and for all whether he changed his mind or if he was always in complete control of what was going on. Maybe that’s a spin on the question – which character keeps a secret that you’d like to learn once and for all?  Maybe find out whether Gertrude knew?