(no subject)

[skygiants]

Last night we went to go see Boston Shakespeare in the Park's Cymbeline, on the Common. It was a perfectly respectable production of Cymbeline, a show that I believe newredshoes once described as a highlights reel of all of Shakespeare's other plot points crammed into one play, featuring as it does:

- fakeout poison
- crossdressing
- a stubborn king who just has to learn to appreciate his daughter more
- a convoluted scheme to make a virtuous wife seem adulterous
- ill-advised bro bets
- an unwanted arranged marriage
- a murderous evil stepmother
- attempted wife murder (based on the aforementioned convoluted scheme to make a virtuous wife seem adulterous)
- kidnapped princes being raised as humble peasants in the Arcadian forest
- fakeout beheading
- a number of rapturous odes to the town of Milford Haven
- the Roman invasion of Britain
- the longest 'have some surprise identity reveals and convoluted explanations!' scene in all of Shakespeare, observed by an audience of confused captive Romans
- Jupiter descending from the heavens to consult with some ghosts
- (I can't believe I had completely forgotten the existence of the scene in which Jupiter descends from the heavens to consult with some ghosts but Boston Shakespeare in the Park wanted to make sure you NOTICED it)

Anyway, we enjoyed it very much, but on the way back genarti and I started trying to figure out how you'd re-jigger the plot so that you still got all of the various batshit elements and the general shape of the story stayed the same (including -- genarti was very insistent -- the rapturous odes to Milford Haven) but also so that Posthumus Leonatus, the love interest and nominal hero of the piece, is not a literal attempted wife murderer before the happy reconciliation at the end of the story. And after some back and forth, I think we've got it!


The key here is that you speed up the timing of the invasion, so Posthumus is in fact already about to go to Milford Haven with the Roman army when Iachimo (also about to head off to the invasion, a little later than Posthumus) shows up to convince him of Imogen's Perfidy.

Instead of trying to lure Imogen to Milford Haven so that his servant can murder her, therefore, Posthumus writes a note calling her to Milford Haven so he can ACCUSE HER TO HER FACE! and then dramatically dump her, Claudio style! This is still obviously a dick move but much less of a dick move than "have my servant stab her." Baby steps.

Imogen, who does not know she is about to be dumped, shows up already cross-dressed (there's no reason Pisanio can't suggest this earlier, when she's running away from the palace) and in disguise as a boy. She finds Posthumus in a tavern, where he does not immediately recognize her, because if Orlando didn't recognize cross-dressed Rosalind in As You Like It there's no reason it shouldn't work here too, and also maybe she's wearing an enormous false moustache or something. It's Shakespeare. It's fine.

Just as she's about to joyously throw off her disguise, she hears Posthumus ranting to his Roman pals about Imogen's unfaithfulness and his plan to dramatically dump her!

DISGUISED IMOGEN: [le gasp! le shock!]
CLUELESS POSTHUMUS: and well you MIGHT be shocked, hot youth!
DISGUISED IMOGEN: surely you wrong your lady, sir!
CLUELESS POSTHUMUS: alas! I have the receipts, hot youth!

Imogen hears all about everything Iachimo said and decides to stay on and meet the Romans, so she can confront Iachimo with his perfidy; in the meantime, however, she decides to head out of Milford Haven for a bit lest Posthumus somehow get a clue and recognize her, and the entire forest interlude plays out as before, including Imogen mistaking Beheaded Cloten for Posthumus and the Romans showing up and adopting her.

Now Imogen, thinking Posthumus is dead, is extra motivated to make Iachimo feel bad for slandering her reputation, and probably gets a whole speech in there about how Posthumus' death is Iachimo's fault for his lies and perfidy (and Iachimo's sudden change of heart at the end of the play makes a lot more sense if it's spurred by a surprisingly hot youth who has been following him around for the past several days going "hey! hey! guess what! YOU'RE A DICK".)

Meanwhile, Pisanio is still off spreading rumors that Imogen is dead, so Posthumus assumes she heard the trash talk that he's been spreading all round Milford Haven and died of a broken heart (once again a la Hero in Much Ado) and still has the avalanche of guilt to allow the end of the play to go forward pretty much unchanged, with extra crossdressing banter and without any attempted wife murder at all. Mr. Shakespeare, you're welcome.

Comments

[skygiants]

It took me several rounds of handing people Hexwood and having them plaintively ask me in the middle if it was ever going to make sense to learn that Hexwood doesn't actually make sense until the second time you read it, because I personally have now read it so many times I can't actually remember the first time I read it...

That production sounds amazing. Our doctor had a beautifully calibrated bad accent which was impressive enough as successful comedy in and of itself, but even more impressive with three!

[sovay]

I personally have now read it so many times I can't actually remember the first time I read it...

Me neither! I can't remember reading any of my formative DWJ for the first time. It's like it's always been in my brain, which must have done incalculable damage.

That production sounds amazing.

I've never seen a slide whistle duel before or since and I feel I've been gravely cheated.

Our doctor had a beautifully calibrated bad accent which was impressive enough as successful comedy in and of itself, but even more impressive with three!

Congratulations on your doctor's bad accent nonetheless! Which kind?

[genarti]

He started off by pronouncing potions as poseeyuns, which, okay, maybe that was meant to be quasi-Spanish or something? But then later, he added to it poiseeyuns for poisons, and some other word I've forgotten which definitely ended in -on rather than -ion but still got the same treatment. It was altogether vaaaaguely Romance language-ish, but heck if I could tell you which he was aiming for. And he had a sort of deliberate, slightly over-enunciated delivery and tendency to dramatic poses and pauses. All of it could very easily have been stilted and excruciating, but he had AMAZING comic timing, so somehow he made it work. In the middle of his first scene, discussing poseeyuns with the evil queen, he paused, strode down the stairs, and declared to the audience, "I do not like her." with a full stop that clanged into place, and the entire audience cracked up as one.

(One of Iachimo's friends, on the other hand, had an OUTRAAAAAGEOUS FRENCH accent that wandered all over Europe, involved giving I'm-just-using-the-French-version pronunciations to words that were mostly not in fact ones that have French versions, and generally made me cringe through his every line. I decided for the sake of my own sanity that his accent was Watsonianly a bad fake, he was actually from three towns over, and either none of his friends could tell or none of them could talk him out of maintaining it.)

[sovay]

It was altogether vaaaaguely Romance language-ish, but heck if I could tell you which he was aiming for.

That's brilliant. I love people who can do bad accents that are actually three different bad accents in a trenchcoat. (By association I get to be proud of spatch, who invented one for Mr. Paravicini in Theatre@First's The Mousetrap that started in Italy, ended in Russia, and holidayed in Luxembourg with occasional outcroppings of New Jersey.)

I decided for the sake of my own sanity that his accent was Watsonianly a bad fake, he was actually from three towns over, and either none of his friends could tell or none of them could talk him out of maintaining it.

. . . That happens in real life sometimes.

[pedanther]

Emotionally, I am convinced that Hexwood made sense the first time I read it, but intellectually I suspect that it was really just that I had faith it would make sense in the end.