Fringe III - Salome and Bards
Aug. 8th, 2007 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerMy mother took the girls to see Little Star in the Fringe tonight, and then back to her house for dinner, giving Ed and me time to see two more Fringe shows. We saw Salome at Jeune Lune, and Bards at the Southern Theater.
Salome was an abridged version of the Oscar Wilde play. It was reasonably coherent, but there were some things that didn't make a whole lot of sense that might make more sense in the original play. It was reminiscent to me of college theater, but what it reminded me of was the experience of watching plays where the director had chosen something way too ambitious and everyone was trying really hard but it wasn't...quite...working.
Wilde wrote the play in archaic language, and the actors all tripped at some point over words like "hath" and "thine." The play opened with an irrelevent but lovely dance performance; unfortunately, the woman who did it was not the one playing Salome, and Salome's dance was interesting but neither fluid nor erotic. John the Baptist was emotionally flat where he's supposed to be fiery and charismatic.
Kind of disappointing, overall.
Salome was at 5:30 and Bards was at 7, so before heading downtown I picked up some subs from Subway to eat between shows. We figured we'd go in and get our tickets, and then step back out to eat our sandwiches. But the theater was crammed full, so we got our tickets and then joined the slow-moving line to get into the seating area, and wound up scarfing about half our sandwiches in the lobby before stuffing them back into their bags to go sit down. The show sold out.
And Bards was fabulous. It's a new play, written by a guy named Nick Ryan; apparently this group of actors has done stuff at the Fringe for the last few years. It's about Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare; Marlowe is a spy, Shakespeare's patron is an unhinged Catholic who wants to overthrow Queen Elizabeth, and apparently Shakespeare carries around a list of unflattering adjectives to apply to Kit to help him remember not to get romantically involved with him again. It was hilarious (though dark -- I mean, if Kit Marlowe is throwing out sarcastic witicisms in the first scene you know he'll die by the end of the last scene) and there were a ton of things I loved about the staging. The costumes were fantastic -- they were this weird blend of Elizabethan and modern that succeeded in telegraphing all sorts of interesting things about the characters in a way that straight-up Elizabethan wouldn't have. During the scene changes, the company sang hip-hop lyrics to madrigal music.
If you live in Minneapolis, go see Bards. But reserve your tickets now, because I bet the two remaining showings (Saturday at 5:30, Sunday at 4) will sell out.
My mother was unimpressed by Little Star, but the girls liked it. I think Molly liked A Tale of Higgledy-Piggledy Mumbo Jumbo better, though.
Salome was an abridged version of the Oscar Wilde play. It was reasonably coherent, but there were some things that didn't make a whole lot of sense that might make more sense in the original play. It was reminiscent to me of college theater, but what it reminded me of was the experience of watching plays where the director had chosen something way too ambitious and everyone was trying really hard but it wasn't...quite...working.
Wilde wrote the play in archaic language, and the actors all tripped at some point over words like "hath" and "thine." The play opened with an irrelevent but lovely dance performance; unfortunately, the woman who did it was not the one playing Salome, and Salome's dance was interesting but neither fluid nor erotic. John the Baptist was emotionally flat where he's supposed to be fiery and charismatic.
Kind of disappointing, overall.
Salome was at 5:30 and Bards was at 7, so before heading downtown I picked up some subs from Subway to eat between shows. We figured we'd go in and get our tickets, and then step back out to eat our sandwiches. But the theater was crammed full, so we got our tickets and then joined the slow-moving line to get into the seating area, and wound up scarfing about half our sandwiches in the lobby before stuffing them back into their bags to go sit down. The show sold out.
And Bards was fabulous. It's a new play, written by a guy named Nick Ryan; apparently this group of actors has done stuff at the Fringe for the last few years. It's about Kit Marlowe and William Shakespeare; Marlowe is a spy, Shakespeare's patron is an unhinged Catholic who wants to overthrow Queen Elizabeth, and apparently Shakespeare carries around a list of unflattering adjectives to apply to Kit to help him remember not to get romantically involved with him again. It was hilarious (though dark -- I mean, if Kit Marlowe is throwing out sarcastic witicisms in the first scene you know he'll die by the end of the last scene) and there were a ton of things I loved about the staging. The costumes were fantastic -- they were this weird blend of Elizabethan and modern that succeeded in telegraphing all sorts of interesting things about the characters in a way that straight-up Elizabethan wouldn't have. During the scene changes, the company sang hip-hop lyrics to madrigal music.
If you live in Minneapolis, go see Bards. But reserve your tickets now, because I bet the two remaining showings (Saturday at 5:30, Sunday at 4) will sell out.
My mother was unimpressed by Little Star, but the girls liked it. I think Molly liked A Tale of Higgledy-Piggledy Mumbo Jumbo better, though.
