skygiants

Really recommend having friends whom you can message and say 'hey I will be in town next month, what theater should we go see' and inevitably it will be a banger; relatedly, also really recommend Fiasco Theater's Pericles at the Classic Stage Company if you happen to get a chance to see it.

Pericles is one of Shakespeare's Weird Ones -- it spans 20 years, the titular Pericles bops around from island to island having really tonally dissonant adventures, villains get erased from the narrative offscreen because they were struck by lightning and assassinations get interrupted by pirates turning up out of nowhere to suddenly kidnap the assassinatee -- and Fiasco Theater not only gets round this but joyously leans into it. From the moment in the first scene that an evil king gestures to what in Shakespeare's text is a Pile of Dead Heads and in this production is four actors standing around the main action tilting their heads and making grotesque 'we're dead!' faces in perfect unison, I knew we were going to be in extremely good hands.

The cast of the production are all costumed in very basic linen shirts and trousers, throwing on and off various capes and scarves and headgears and bits of armor as they take on different characters; every time Pericles encounters a major oceanic transition, a new Pericles actor takes over, with the previous Pericles rotating back into the ensemble. This has the impressive effect of making the relative incoherence of the play feel intentional and perhaps even meaningful, while also giving every single actor a chance to shine in at least three different roles. Our first Pericles also played a raunchy governor and a random prince with one line and clearly had as much or more fun delivering his one line as the random prince as he did any of his larger roles, and you got that sense from all of them all the way through.

Generally speaking, the show was consistently very funny and charming without becoming so much a parody that its emotional beats did not hit. I was especially impressed by the SUPER CUTE royal father & daughter duo in the second section -- this also had a really delightful dance scene where there was some business of the dad king making a point of Showing His Daughter's Crush How the Choreography Worked and it was just so, so fun -- and by the fact that somehow this cast managed to make the brothel scene in the back half, which I think would have been excruciating and miserable to watch in almost any other production, really fun and entertaining. They were also really natural at interacting with the audience! It was a very small theater, and the actors had made a point of wandering around before the official start of the show to say hello, so when a guy two seats next to us got struck down with a mortifying coughing fit the narrator could pause to nod and tell him "you're fine" and it just felt very like yeah, okay, the fourth wall is and should be a permeable thing and we and the cast are all in it together enjoying the magic of theater.

The one thing I did not like is that there were a couple of songs in the production, and several of the songs used modern language and unnecessarily spelled out things that the actors had just made perfectly clear with effective stagecraft, and we all agreed on leaving that they needn't have and in fact we would really rather they hadn't. I am exempting the opening song from this, which in fact does mostly use language from the play and as a result I found it perfectly fine; you can in fact hear it in the trailer, here:

In the past two weeks, I have seen two children's musicals. One was New Repertory Theater's The Snow Queen, which jinian has already posted about, and genarti has promised to post about, and littledust has made a number of pointed tweets about, so I'm just going to ... let that unfortunate conglomeration of snow bees, talking flowers and poor directorial judgment sit where it's lying for a while.

INSTEAD I am going to talk about A.R.T.'s The Pirate Princess, the Twelfth Night MUSICAL PIRATE AU, which genarti and I went to see tonight and ( which was everything we wanted it to be AND MORE! )

Tonight I dragged nextian with me to see The Winter's Tale: A MUSICAL starring A SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE OF NEW YORK, because a.) last year's Tempest Starring A Significant Percentage Of New York WAS AMAZING and b.) tonight is actually my last night for at least a while as a resident of the city, which is really weird, and going to go see the city celebrate itself seemed like an appropriate thing to do.

Anyway, Winter's Tale was not quite as good as last year's Tempest, which was just, like, mind-bogglingly wonderful, but it was still pretty delightful! The ballerinas had significantly less swagger, but on the other hand, a swing band on stilts. Also, still on the other hand, SESAME STREET.

( If you were wondering if Sesame Street is just as good live: yes. Yes they are. )

I got like three hours of sleep last night so I'm going to go fall over now, but I'm really, really glad this is how I decided to spend my last night in New York. Tomorrow I move to Boston? TOMORROW I MOVE TO BOSTON. File under: things that I still haven't fully internalized yet.

The playbill that we read described this weekend's musical production of The Tempest in Central Park -- starring Norm Lewis, several gifted professional comedians and singers, 250 or so New Yorkers from various community performance ensembles, and three taxi drivers -- as being inspired by the idea of a "community masque" from 1916 called Caliban by the Yellow Sands, which in turn was inspired by courtly masques of the sixteenth century, which for those unfamiliar mostly involved lots of music, dancing and pageantry strung together by a plot. There was also a lot of very earnest language about theater INVOLVING THE COMMUNITY and people SEEING THEMSELVES REFLECTED ONSTAGE which I will admit moved my heart, because YES.

Anyway, genarti and littledust and I looked at this description, and then we looked at the list of community groups that had been invited to participate, and said, "This is going to be either AMAZING or COMPLETELY INCOHERENT . . . and where the hell are they going to fit in the Taxi Driver's Union?"

( Spoiler: IT WAS AMAZING )

I am so sorry that the show only lasted a weekend and so most of you will never get a chance to see it. But I so, so hope that they do as they implied they would and put on more shows like this one, which could have been totally incoherent and instead somehow came together in a glorious explosion of pageantry and joy and celebration of this city that I love and the people who live in it. Sometimes there is actually nothing better than two hundred people having the TIME OF THEIR LIVES onstage getting to showcase all the stuff they do awesomely well.

Some exciting things:

1. I have a story appearing in an upcoming anthology! This one is a bit more niche than the other, but I know there at least a few of you for whom the words STEAMPUNK SHAKESPEARE are not entirely devoid of interest, in which case you should check out The Omnibus of Dr. Bill Shakes!

My story is basically a bit of Measure for Measure WITH CYBORGS. It is not much like my previous story Granada's Library, except that it's also an exploration of religion involving a steampunk nun, which is now a niche I feel pretty safe in saying I have down. Other aspiring steampunk nun chroniclers: BACK OFF. THIS IS MY TURF.

However if CYBORG MEASURE FOR MEASURE does not sound appealing -- which I do not blame you in the least if it does not, it's a weird play -- you also have Steampunk King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, and Richard III to look forward to, among many others and also sonnets. They're taking pre-orders for the print run (which will be limited) over here, so if you're interested, speak now! (As an author, I also get a 40% discount on the cover price, which brings the hard copy price down to $12, so if you want to work that angle I am totally willing to facilitate that.)

2. And now switching over to my other career: I'm going to be spending the summer interning at Harvard Film Archive processing one of their collections! This is SUPER EXCITING. However it also requires some logistical wiggling, primarily, uh, a place to stay. I was originally supposed to be taking over my brother's lease in the summer, but he went and rented it out from under me, so hey, Bostonians, if any of you know of someone looking to sublet for the months of June and July, give me a heads-up, because I would very much appreciate any leads! I am a great and undemanding roommate, just ask innerbrat and rushin_doll. (I am also only interning four days a week, so I will probably be zooming back and forth to NYC many weekends.)

Man, believe it or not, I actually get to post about really really good theater today! That being Theater for a New Audience's production of Merchant of Venice, which obopolsk and I went to see via magic-four-dollar-tickets last night.

Merchant is definitely not my favorite play - is there anyone whose favorite play it is? I'm really curious about this, actually; I think it's really interesting, but a near-impossible play to love - but this was the kind of production that reminds you why the problem plays are really, really worth it to stage, and overall just some of the best Shakespeare I've seen in a really long time. The attention to detail in the production was just fantastic. Anti-Semitism obviously still takes the main stage, but the direction and the choices deliberately highlighted a lot of the other issues that many productions try to skim over. Some things that impressed me:

- the setting of the play is modern or near-future, and the entire set of Antonio's friends (including Bassanio, Lorenzo and Gratiano) were played as exactly the kind of smarmy status-obsessed financial district fratboys that you run into everywhere in New York. Seriously, I felt like I went to college with some of these guys.
- Nerissa was played by a black actress, and during all the scenes with the Prince of Morocco, it's Nerissa you're watching - and her silent reaction when Portia tosses off her line about "let all of his complexion choose me so" is pretty gutting
- . . . except for the times when you're watching Balthasar's hilarious silent flirtation with the Prince of Morocco's bodyguard. The dude who played Balthasar was a complete scene-stealer, by the way. He had like two lines in the whole play and my eyes were on him every time he was on stage just to appreciate the glory of his patiently long-suffering face. But anyway, I mention that flirtation especially because . . .
- this was definitely a much more explicitly queer production than I expected! I mean, Merchant of Venice is already a textually slashy play, and this production had the slash ramped up to ELEVEN, and the part that really impressed me is how very deliberately they did that, and without making it a joke - Portia's face when Bassanio kisses Antonio during the trial scene packs almost as much of a punch as Nerissa's during the Prince of Morocco scene. The end definitely does not heteronormatize the play, and resolves nothing.
- on a different note, Jessica's actress did a really amazing job of showing her emotional conflict throughout the whole show. You could see the tension in her whenever she was onstage, and none of her scenes with Launcelot were played for comedy.
- Which isn't to say it wasn't a funny production! I was laughing out loud through a lot of it (and not just at Balthasar, although, may I say again: SCENE-STEALER.) But it was funny in the way Merchant should be funny, where the comedy is always balanced on that uncomfortable knife-edge that might slice into you at any moment.
- Okay, this has nothing to do with any serious issues at all, but just in terms of staging, a bunch of the scenes where someone calls in their buddy or partner or whatever and has a conversation with them and then sends them away again were conducted via cell-phone. This is something I've never seen in a modernized Shakespeare before, which in retrospect I find shocking. Why don't more productions do this? It works so well!
- Relatedly, I would like to buy the costume designer a drink. So many excellent details! The fake moustaches! Bassanio's tie! Lorenzo and Jessica standing around awkwardly in bathrobes during the super awkward final scene!

Ahhhh I was going to segue from here into a booklogging post about some plays I have read recently, but it seems I have spent too long talking about Merchant of Venice so I will end it up here and save that post for later. I did not expect to have so many feelings about this play! But basically, I am pretty sure that this production is going to be the one that any other will have to beat, for me - and if you're in NYC and have a free night over the next week or so, I would definitely suggest it is worth your while to check the production out. (It's here until March 13th! You still have time!)

Most people, I suspect, do not write their autobiographies when they are twenty-eight years old. But apparently 28-year-old Kenneth Branagh, who was trying to start up a theater company and was extremely cash-strapped, is the exception to this rule! Hence Beginnings. I am okay with this because it means I get to read an autobiography of Kenneth Branagh pre-all of Kenneth Branagh's worst life decisions (ex: Love's Labor's Lost, As You Like It, divorcing Emma Thompson.) Also, Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson's awesome mom, drew the pictures!

Okay, here's an embarrassing confession: Kenneth Branagh was totally one of my first celebrity crushes. Look, I was exposed to Much Ado About Nothing at a young age! These things happen! Older and wiser now, I recognize that there is a certain inherent lulziness of Kenneth Branagh's directing-and-acting style - and by the way, is anyone else extremely disappointed that Kenneth Branagh is not taking the starring role in Thor as well as directing? BECAUSE I AM - but I still cannot help but making eyehearts at Benedick and several other Baby Branagh roles. And the Baby Branagh autobiography was actually pretty charming! My favorite parts were probably when he was accused of acting Richard III like a Dalek, his constant grumping about people telling him he has a cherubic baby face/is destined to play policemen, and all the cameos from BRIAN BLESSED, alternately ragging on Branagh's directing style and expounding on how Claudius JUST WANTS TO GET LAID.

Anyway, so then obviously I had to go rewatch Much Ado About Nothing. And maybe take a few screencaps. And . . . well.

 

( 80-odd Much Ado icons under the cut! Mostly of various cast members making lulzy faces )