Month: July 2007

http://mirroruptolife.blogspot.com/2007/07/mirror-duped-boston-theatre-head-gets.html The “Mirror Up To Life” blog, a blog on Boston Theatre, has a reference up to the whole question of CitiGroup’s funding of Commonwealth Shakespeare.  As we locals know, the production run was cut crazy short this year, a mere 1 week instead of the usual 3.  When it rained on Saturday, we all thought we were done for.  I don’t know about anybody else, but I certainly was clapping when it came time to “thank our sponsor” for screwing us out of 2 weeks of theatre. Say what you will about budgets and finances and where the money went.  According to the article linked, the CEO took a salary cut of 100k this year, but still got a $1.265 million bonus.  Shakespeare’s budget, meanwhile, was sliced in half, to $480k.  Hey,  I rented my chairs and put my cash in the hat when it came around.  I wonder if the CEO wants a piece of that action, too?   

Once upon a time I found some audio of John Gielgud reading the sonnets, but complained that it was streaming only, not downloadable, and thus I never got to listen to it. Chris Hughes just sent me this pointer to his LibriVox recordings of the sonnets, which are indeed in MP3.  I’ve downloaded a bunch (they are grouped 10 to a file) but not yet had the chance to listen. Thanks, Chris! Also in Shakespeare Audio news I found an intriguing link to Shake5, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is.  Among other things it’s 84 hours of recorded Shakespeare, which is cool.  But it also appears to be some sort of CD-ROM hosted database complete with the text of the plays all synced up to the audio?  It looks like it may have been for sale at one point but is now transitioning over to be a free download.  Anybody know more about the project?  

The last line of Shakespeare’s will reads “I have hereunto put my seale”, and then seale is scratched out and replaced with “hand”, “the date and year above written.”  What does this mean?  Typically he would have used a “seal ring” to identify the official document, but presumably he could not find it when he was writing the will, and thus his signature would have to suffice. The blog “Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet” has the fascinating history of that ring, which was found in 1810, including some very frenzied reactions to the discovery (“in sooth I hope it is not Brummagem, in double sooth I hope it is his, and in triple sooth I hope I shall have an impression” :)) and even speculation about how he lost it in the first place.  Weight loss due to illness, perhaps? Pictures included, as well as plenty of links and excerpts of original dated documents.  Nice informative post.

My regular readers know that I’ve been waiting for this show for a year.  You see, I quite literally work across the street from Boston Common now.  So last year, after less than stellar seats at Taming of the Shrew, I told my wife, “Next year, for one night, I want to just walk over here after work and camp out.  Get myself a nice spot.” Then I found out that the show would only be a week this year, limiting my flexibility somewhat drastically.  Worse, the location they chose on the Common meant that they would be jamming 3x as many people into half the space.  A space, mind you, strewn about with park benches (facing the wrong way), trees,  and a big ol’ gazebo. On top of that, the play is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which most of us have seen more than any other play because it’s basically the safest, “all ages” play there is. Just got back. I LOVED IT. Loved the costumes, loved the acting, loved the music, loved everything about it!  I am thrilled to have seen that.  Ok, fine, it was a little “Circ Du Soleil”, like another reviewer said.  Everybody was dressed in colors that looked like the play was performed under a black light.   But how is that a slight against it?  The whole idea is that once the main characters have entered the forest, you need something that signifies they’ve entered a whole new world.  Dressing the Athenians in pure white, and then dressing all the fairies in day glo yellows and oranges, certainly does that. The bare stage concept worked stunningly well.  Back to basics, as it were.  The fairies carried balloons with them wherever they went, which I am assuming were supposed to represent the trees.   And there was a massive trapdoor right in the middle of the stage from which people could appear as needed.  Puck even managed a trick or two of his own, “disappearing” off the edge of the stage by what appeared to be quite literally just diving off the edge.  Tomorrow morning I’ll have to see if I can sneak over and see how he did that, I’m guessing some sort of mat or cushion he was diving onto. The mechanicals were excellent, but how can they not be?  They’re so over the top in their badness that it’s almost impossible to do them badly.  Helena stole the show for me, but doesn’t she always?  I have to admit I was more distracted than anything else by Oberon, who looked and sounded like a character out of the Lion King (complete with African headdress).  If I have to pick a fault, I’d have to say that the performance itself was nothing stellar.  Theseus goofed his opening line.  The dancers were not in sync, and the singers were out of tune.  The music was excellent, and the dancing fit well where they put it, I’m just saying that as far as performing goes they didn’t come off like professional singers and dancers, you know? I’m going back on Saturday.  

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=4&id=45827&template=7 Well, I just found out that the guy doing QA on my team here at work used to teach Hamlet.  Nice.  After a lengthy discussion of Shakespeare, and specifically A Midsummer Night’s Dream that begins tonight, he sent me the above link to an interview with William Carroll about the play’s appeal, popularity, and underlying themes.