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I just got back from seeing The Revenger's Tragedy at Theater@First in Somerville with

aamcnamara and

genarti (plus bonus encounter

sovay); there is one show left and it is tomorrow and if you are in the Boston area and have the time to go, you should!

Relevant facts:

a.) I love The Revenger's Tragedy. I first read the play in my Jacobean tragedy class in college; I have seen the film, which stars Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard and is set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool, at least four times and no doubt will see it again sometime in the not too distant future.

b.) This version is not set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool. It is set in a circus. The Duke is the ringmaster and evil brothers Supervacuo, Ambitioso, and Junior are all clowns fighting for the clown crown. (Oldest brother Lussorioso is a lion-tamer.) This allows for a lot of truly magnificent physical comedy, as a pair of clowns with painted-on smiles attempt to murder their older brother, badly. It also means that every so often during a scene break someone will come out and sing "The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze" or apologetically juggle.

c.) Because I have seen the film four times, I remembered many of the most important plot elements, including the incest and the secret identities and the poisoned skull. I had, however, forgotten several others that got cut out of the film, including the part when Vindice, our ~~hero~~ protagonist, through a convoluted series of events, gets accidentally hired to murder himself while his brother Hippolito desperately attempts to keep a straight face.

d.) "Everyone was great," said

genarti after the show, "but the MVP was Hippolito's face journeys." It's true. They were consistently beautiful.

e.) We were warned there might be blood spatter if we sat in the first row, so we sat in the third like the chickens we are, but we did see some beautiful arcs fountain across the stage during the Grand Guignol finale.

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AGREED ON ALL COUNTS. As someone who has neither read the play nor seen the movie version even one time, I had some difficulty tracking some of the details of how everyone was or wasn't related to each other, but also: IT DOES NOT MATTER. Most or all of them are related, most or all of them are gonna end up murderers or murderees or both, it's fine.

I would however add that the casting of this play was gloriously queer in many directions and it was amazing. (Also that there are sexual assault references, although all sexual assaulters get thoroughly murdered eventually.)

Most or all of them are related, most or all of them are gonna end up murderers or murderees or both, it's fine.

At intermission I was saying to my mother, "They're an incredibly dysfunctional blended family."

The casting was so queer! And the costumes and stage direction backed it the fuck up and it was awesome. Making it queer definitely lessened the "oh wow gosh this is EXTREMELY misogynistic" aspect of the show, which was nice, that was nice.

Of course it is impossible to take all the misogyny out ("I am so sad about my wife being dead, she was just SO CHASTE" okay, buddy) but they had a good try at it and mitigated a great deal! A+ for that.

THE CASTING WAS SO GOOD.

That is one thing I like about the film that I don't know if the show quite managed, which is to make it explicit that Antonio's own form of misogyny, and his eagerness to use what happened to his wife to stoke his own political ambition, is just another face of the same rot that's all throughout the court.

Yeah, you're right; he was played pretty straight (pun intended) here.

Yeah, although I did note his crying makeup -- the literally painted-on LOOK HOW SAD I AM over top of what he was actually feeling (which doubtless did genuinely include sadness! but also, you know, all the rest.)

See, I don't like it when productions do this!! (Besides the film, it's also the case in the Jesse Berger adaptation.) I think it's really important for Vindice's character that he has no place in an honest world because his actual skillset is murder and mayhem; Vindice proudly fessing up to Antonio like a cat bringing in a dead bird and getting an "arrest the fuck out of that guy" instead of gratitude is a much more satisfying ending for me, character-wise and theme-wise, than "eliminate that guy who knows too much."

Hmm, you've got a point, and I do enjoy the Strangers on a Train-ness of Vindice assuming that Antonio's going to be On Board With Murder because Vindice brought it up once in a weird conversation that Antonio was not really paying attention to and was a little weirded out by, but I also really like the opportunity that playing Antonio as a darker figure offers to complicate his own portrayal of his wife and make her a more interesting presence in the text.

The casting and costuming and staging were all so good! Definitely one of the best-produced pieces I've seen from this company.

This sounds amazing. Did the skull have poisoned clown makeup?

TRAGICALLY NO but I absolutely feel this should be suggested for the next circus-themed Jacobean staging.

Amazing.

Getting hired to murder yourself is a plot complication that should be utilized more often.

IT SHOULD. There are so many delightful possible spinoff complications, although I give the solution "we'll just dress the guy we murdered earlier up in my clothes and pretend he's me so I can stab the corpse" points for creativity.

Seriously. Even in fanfic it'd be perfect for so many fandoms.

It also means that every so often during a scene break someone will come out and sing "The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze" or apologetically juggle.

"The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" has been stuck in my head since last Friday.

I had never before heard the song in full! I feel like it was an educational experience.

Plays with blood splatter are the best plays.

If you don't go a little Grand Guignol with your Jacobean tragedy you're probably doing it wrong.

Having never read the play, here is a question: did they add the "some of these kids are the Duchess's from her first marriage" bit for this production, or is it in the original? I don't think it's in the Eccleston version (if I am remembering correctly)--they are just all the Duke's kids and the oldest is the favorite.

The step-ness of the younger children is from the original, and the Eccleston version removes it! I'd also forgotten that was the case until I came back last night and found my notes from reading the play (and seeing the movie for the first time) in 2008; I'd also forgotten that apparently it's been theorized as a Hamlet parody (skull, grave jokes, poison, incest, judgmental sons yelling at their moms...)

LOL, down to the 'tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come' bit. I also first read this play in a college lit class and I think we concluded it was just parodying EVERYTHING. Even other plays that hadn't been written yet.

That Jacobean tragedy class was probably my favorite thing I ever did in college, I don't remember ever laughing so hard in any other!

Our class was more 'Plays Written By People Not Named Will,' so we got Tamburlaine, Revenger's, Knight of the Burning Pestle AND the William Ireland forgery thrown in because it amused our professor. It was like a play a week or something wild like that.

Ours was All Weird Tragedy All The Time -- we eased in with Othello, then did The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, Women Beware Women, Revenger's Tragedy, and one or two others that I don't right now remember. Just an escalating cascade of increasingly bizarre murder methods.

We didn't do White Devil for some reason! but Duchess, Whore, Revenger's Tragedy and another one, dammit (be funny if we were forgetting the same one)....possibly The Changeling? (I remember seeing a VERY strange adaptation of that on Bravo cable, with Elizabeth McGovern and Hugh Grant in)....and the teacher had a lot of fun with the final asking us how we would stage various completely OTT endings.

...huh, I was assuming it was pre-Hamlet, but yeah, that makes a certain amount of sense.

And good to know about the stepkids! Interesting that the Eccleston version took it out.

In general the Eccleston version seems committed to taking everything about the Duke's dysfunctional family situation, which is already So Much, and giving it an extra turn to the left...

This sounds so entirely awesome and I am delighted you got to see it and a tiny bit sad I didn't see it, but, also, somehow I didn't know there was a movie and so now I can look forward to seeing that!

(I... cannot remember if I have read the Revenger's Tragedy several times and forgotten most of it or if I have just read things that discuss it in loving detail many many times and remembered all of that, but either way I am extremely here for this.)

Oh man, the movie is so strange and so good! It's one of my favorite filmed adaptations of early modern content -- using the Jacobean language to create this very cool and trippy world all its own. And the soundtrack is by Chumbawumba!

(I definitely first encountered the Revenger's Tragedy as described in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, but by this point the film takes up the largest amount of Revenger's Tragedy real estate in my brain...)

The descriptions of the plays in Tam Lin are one of my very favourite things about that book.

I'm so sad I couldn't come see this (I'm in another show running concurrently) - I love the play and I could have had fannish meetings too?! :(

Hippolito is so underrated. I'm aware of a production that cut him out entirely and that's so wrong! Vindice needs someone who's not the audience to bounce off, and his own arc is so much fun.

Alas, but being in another show is an extremely good reason to miss this one! (What's the show that you're in, if I can ask? Feel no obligation to answer if you're not comfortable with it!)

Why would you cut Hippolito?! Hippolito is one of the best characters in the show! Every time I've seen him played it's as the only character who's got the tiniest iota o a sense of proportion, and it's a.) amazing b.) DESPERATELY NEEDED as a foil to literally everyone else.

He's so great! Simultaneously has a bit of an arc of getting into the whole elaborate-murder schtick, but also is the one going VINDICE NO while Vindice is going VINDICE YES. I love his "Brother, I do applaud thy constant vengeance, the quaintness of thy malice above thought" because I always read that as a "that's...really creative, Vindice :o ", the whole plot about Vindice being hired to kill himself, and also the end where Vindice is turning himself in and Hippolito is in the back going NO NO NO NO.

Oh also VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION: did anyone get beaten with Junior's severed head??? It's strongly indicated by the text and is a fantastic bit of black-humor slapstick, but my production is the only one I've seen do it (out of, I admit, three).

TRAGICALLY nobody did and I am now marking that up as my greatest disappointment with the production, why would anyone drop that ball??

Our Hippolito had great faces all the way through but the WHAT, WHY, I CANNOT BELIEVE expression at the end, as Vindice blithely announces their execution warrant, was ... honestly a work of living art.

My theory about why the play ends this way is that Middleton wrote himself into a corner where his protagonist totally got away with all his crimes, but genre conventions require that he can't get away with it, so what else is there to do but turn himself in?

... Eddie Izzard?

I am so delighted I cannot even. My entire understanding of the play comes from Pamela Dean's Tam Lin but now I know I must see the movie.

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