FREE LOVE Part II: Summer Shakespeare Round-Up

8/11/07 Midsummer Night's Dream (Delacorte): Ugh. What a disappointment. One of the worst MMD performances I've seen. Overacted and incoherent. For me, the one genuinely funny and unforced scene was early on, when the "working-class actors" first get together to plan their play-within-the-play. But overall, sad to say, no character won my sympathy during this performance. Even though it was advertised under the rubric of "FREE LOVE" (like the much more successful production of Romeo and Juliet in the first half of the summer), I felt pure apathy for the lot of them.

To make matters worse, the Athenians were dolled up in Victorian garb for no apparent reason. Or maybe the clothing style was chosen so the ridiculous bustles could be torn off of the lead female characters in pieces - but even so, why??!

At least I had fun waiting for tickets with my friends, and we enjoyed a lovely dinner beforehand at a new (to us) restaurant very near the park.

8/1/07 The Tempest (Abrons Amphitheater): I was looking forward to this, because I am relatively unfamiliar with The Tempest. Unfortunately, my friend and I lingered over dinner in Chinatown, so we were pretty late. And then the seats (shallow stone steps) were so uncomfortable, it was hard to concentrate. So we didn't get the most out of it that we could. But I thought it was interesting to have Ariel played simultaneously by three women - it gives a sense of a spirit that is larger than life and ethereal (especially when the actresses are not standing next to each other).

7/26/07 Henry V (Riverside Park, Gorilla Rep): I was supposed to see Henry V on the 27th, but with a "scattered t-storms" forecast, I ended up going a day early. It was a good production, although some of the actors/characters were better than others. (For instance, I found Nell Quickly overacted, and also the King of France, but those are minor characters.) The scenes with Nym and Pistol tended to be unduly audience-interactive, meaning that the actors tended to go among the audience and directly talk to, or even touch, a spectator or two. I suppose they were attempting to engage us during comic scenes that have not, perhaps, aged as well as the rest of the piece.

One thing that worked well was that the actor playing King Henry seemed to grow into the role as he played it. I think this is deliberate, and it was really effective. In the first scene, I was thinking Oh no, he doesn't know what he's doing, the reaction to the Dauphin's gift is all wrong... But soon, as he gains experience leading troops in battle, he is more confident and more convincing and by the end - wow.

I recognized a few of the actors/actresses from the production of Hamlet back in May. The actress who played Ophelia (unconvincingly, to my mind) is much better as the French princess, Kate.

6/23/07 Love's Labour's Lost (Central Park, New York Classical Theatre): I saw this twice, and enjoyed it. The first time was especially fun, because there were some little kids there, maybe 2nd graders, who seemed to be getting their first taste of Shakespeare. They loved it when characters made funny faces or used funny voices!

This is a play I'm not as familiar with as some of the others, and it is an intriguing premise: three men agree to swear off women and devote themselves entirely to study for a year (or was it three years?), with severe penalties for violators. Of course, the day the edict is proclaimed, guess who comes to town.... By the end of the play, the men have forsworn their oaths and have instead sworn their undying affection for the three ladies (who have teased them mercilessly). And yet the women do not accept them, but instead make them wait a year to see if their love will be constant. Is this wise or foolish? The playwright does not say.

Unlike Gorilla Rep, which tends to keep to a more compact area, I've noticed that NY Classical Theatre often arranges back-to-back scenes that require a bit of a schlep. You might think the scenes could all be within view of each other, considering that there is no scenery to prepare. But this may be a public service to increase the amount of exercise the audience will get. Fight obesity, rah rah rah!