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naomikritzer...the result would be something like the Guthrie's current production of Midsummer Night's Dream.
I don't mean that in a bad way. There are plays that are just terrible if you overproduce them, but if you're going to take a Shakespeare play and give it a blockbuster budget, Dream is probably the one to pick. I mean, you can do a perfectly lovely production with simple costumes and fairies that walk, run, or skip on and off the stage, but if you happen to have the budget and technology to do flying wires, unitards that make it look like they've they've got tribal tattoos all over their bodies, two-foot orange mohawk wigs, feathers, rhinestones, and lighting effects that would not be out of place in a music video -- well, the honest truth is, if Shakespeare had access to these things for Dream? He'd have used them. I mean, this is a man who added a completely gratuitous "eye of newt and toe of frog!" cackling around a cauldron scene to his play about a Scottish king when he realized that the witches were what drove ticket sales. If he'd had flying wires for his fairies, he'd probably have written in entire additional scenes that were there just to give the fairies more opportunities to show off.
It really is a good production: the performances were excellent, with Oberon/the Duke and Titania/Hippolyta, and the entire company of Rude Mechanicals, particular standouts. But the actors were kind of upstaged by the production itself. Did I mention that the set piece for Titania's bower is an enormous hinged egg that rises out of the floor? The whole production was gorgeous to look at. It would be worth going just to stare at the set and the costumes.
Molly found some of the speeches boring (I could tell, because she got a little fidgety) but liked the fairy spectacle and loved the play-within-a-play. The Guthrie does not normally admit kids Molly's age, but this was the once-yearly Shakespeare event to which adults are admitted only if they're in the company of a kid aged 8 to 17. (We said Molly was eight when we bought the ticket. She's not, quite, but she's close; I saw a kid there who couldn't have been older than five, which made me feel less guilty.) The performance is also subsidized by grants, so it's $10/ticket; Guthrie tickets, even for matinees, are normally a lot more than that. It was an attentive crowd, but less buttoned-down than you'd find on a typical Saturday night -- behind me, there were a couple of teenagers that kept enthusiastically narrating bits to each other.
The actors were clearly delighted to be performing for a theater full of kids. The event included cookies and the opportunity to meet the cast afterwards (and I didn't think to bring the camera, dammit; you could get your kid's picture with Oberon and Titania, or with Titania's fairies, or Puck, or Bottom...) and they all happily signed programs and answered questions.
I don't mean that in a bad way. There are plays that are just terrible if you overproduce them, but if you're going to take a Shakespeare play and give it a blockbuster budget, Dream is probably the one to pick. I mean, you can do a perfectly lovely production with simple costumes and fairies that walk, run, or skip on and off the stage, but if you happen to have the budget and technology to do flying wires, unitards that make it look like they've they've got tribal tattoos all over their bodies, two-foot orange mohawk wigs, feathers, rhinestones, and lighting effects that would not be out of place in a music video -- well, the honest truth is, if Shakespeare had access to these things for Dream? He'd have used them. I mean, this is a man who added a completely gratuitous "eye of newt and toe of frog!" cackling around a cauldron scene to his play about a Scottish king when he realized that the witches were what drove ticket sales. If he'd had flying wires for his fairies, he'd probably have written in entire additional scenes that were there just to give the fairies more opportunities to show off.
It really is a good production: the performances were excellent, with Oberon/the Duke and Titania/Hippolyta, and the entire company of Rude Mechanicals, particular standouts. But the actors were kind of upstaged by the production itself. Did I mention that the set piece for Titania's bower is an enormous hinged egg that rises out of the floor? The whole production was gorgeous to look at. It would be worth going just to stare at the set and the costumes.
Molly found some of the speeches boring (I could tell, because she got a little fidgety) but liked the fairy spectacle and loved the play-within-a-play. The Guthrie does not normally admit kids Molly's age, but this was the once-yearly Shakespeare event to which adults are admitted only if they're in the company of a kid aged 8 to 17. (We said Molly was eight when we bought the ticket. She's not, quite, but she's close; I saw a kid there who couldn't have been older than five, which made me feel less guilty.) The performance is also subsidized by grants, so it's $10/ticket; Guthrie tickets, even for matinees, are normally a lot more than that. It was an attentive crowd, but less buttoned-down than you'd find on a typical Saturday night -- behind me, there were a couple of teenagers that kept enthusiastically narrating bits to each other.
The actors were clearly delighted to be performing for a theater full of kids. The event included cookies and the opportunity to meet the cast afterwards (and I didn't think to bring the camera, dammit; you could get your kid's picture with Oberon and Titania, or with Titania's fairies, or Puck, or Bottom...) and they all happily signed programs and answered questions.
What a great idea!
Date: 2008-06-06 04:06 pm (UTC)--Pseudo