World Enough and Time

Watched the first two parts of Michael Wood's In Search of William Shakespeare this evening. What a great show.

So they've found The Curtain theatre - Shakespeare's theatre before The Globe.

So cool.

The story was also in The Guardian.

I liked the quote:

Dominic Dromgoole, artistic director of the reconstructed Globe, described the discovery as "hugely exciting".

"I love the fact that we are excavating London, and slowly clearing away the miserable piles of Victoriana and Empire, and revealing the wild, anarchic and joyous London which is lurking beneath. It reminds me of the Zocalo in Mexico City, where all the Spanish palaces are slowly sinking into the earth, and the old Mayan temples are being squeezed back up."

You can tell he's in theatre, and not an archaeologist. I don't think that's how it works

I'd love to see where it is on a map of London.

How did English in Shakespeare's time really sound?

Seems they've figured it out: How should Shakespeare really sound? - though I'm always a little skeptical about the recreation of historical speech.

Still. Shakespeare. I love the way it souds - much more like modern speech and I expected - and the excerpts are nicely read.

Or maybe it's just that I'm such a Shakespeare junkie I'd love it in any case.

This amused me: William Bloody Shakespeare. Interesting that Whittell compared Shakespeare (unfavourably) to Dickens; I don't think many people now alive love the works of Dickens more than I do, but better than Shakespeare? Uh-uh. No, really, not.

Watched the film of the David Tennant version of Hamlet this evening with maaseru and Pim.

What a show. Keep in mind that I adore Shakespeare with a passionate passion, and Hamlet is my favourite of his plays. I've seen a lot of Hamlets, from the embarrassingly terrible to the brilliant.



I'd heard Tennant's performance was good, and I'd also heard it was over the top - that Tennant starts on such a note of hysteria, or madness, that he left nowhere to go for the emotions to escalate.

It must have been someone who really liked understated performances who said that, since I thought Tennant was just about perfect. I'm not saying he was the best of all Hamlets, or that there could be a definitive Hamlet, or that I haven't seen other great versions: I am saying that I found Tennant to be expressive, interesting, sympathetic, dynamic and utterly natural in the role.

( A few specific comments... )

Went to a movie this afternoon: The Tempest, starring Helen Mirren



( It's terrific. )

I just got home from seeing Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors at the National Arts Centre. I'd had my doubts beforehand, partly because it isn't one of Shakespeare's more substantial plays, and partly because it was directed by Peter Hinton, who failed to impress me with his strangely pointless and random production of Taming of the Shrew at Stratford.

Well, it turned out to be fabulous. Not the best Shakespeare I've ever seen, but everything that it ought to be: funny and outrageous and predicable and quirky and imaginative.

The story, if you don't know it, is all about two sets of twins who are confused for each other. Separated when young, one grew up in Ephesus (with a servant, Dromio) and the other in Syracuse (with Dromio's twin brother, also called Dromio). Their father goes travelling to look for them and is about to be executed for being in Epheses without enough money. As it happens, every one turns up in Ephesus, and each Antipholus keeps being confused with the other one (and Dromio with Dromio) and it's all outrageously silly.

This production played up the old-fashioned silliness with broad humour and topical references - not in the dialogue, which was pure Shakespeare, but in the business and the props and the nuances. We have references to urban transit, the RCMP, gay marriage, Star Wars and its fandom, Star Trek, and tiger slippers. The various duels are fought with light sabres. Most times when the actors went on or off the stage, they used the hand sanitizers at the doorways.

And the set was gorgeous. Minimalist - I love minimalist sets. Metallic and reflective walls that occasionally showed windows or doors or an inset bed. Before the curtain - Figuratively speaking, as there was no curtain - the set was bare, with a small ship hanging in the middle near the floor. On one wall: a clock with no hands. On the other wall: a picture of the Queen. On both: the hand sanitizers.



Of the various actors, I thought the two women playing Dromio were the funniest, Danielle Desormeaux and Debra Kirshenbaum, both masters of physical comedy. I thought in passing that Clare Coulter, who played the Abbess, could easily take the role of Sybilla Crawford, Dowager Lady Culter - and that was before I saw her name.

My favourite character was the depressed but sexy old man, Antipholus of Ephesus, played by Andreas Apergas.

Had a lovely day, a very sociable day.

Around 9.30 a.m., Lynne visited me to go over one or two weight-training exercises she'd given me, that I'd forgotten. She's planning to do more walking; she says her aerobic walks with the dog have turned into mere saunters now the dog is aging, so she plans to do more real winter walking. I was impressed. I'd like to do the same.

But not today. I went to lunacy_gal's place for brunch with maaseru and josanpq, to see her newly renovated kitchen. A good time was had by all, especially when josanpq treated us to a talk she'd given her students about the Great Wall of Hull, erected during the war between the Marquis of Aylmer and the Duke of Gatineau. With pictures. Well, hadn't we always wondered where the Great Wall of Hull came from?

Besides that bit of history, lunacy_gal gave me a Christmas present: a jigsaw puzzle that has a picture of Shakespeare at the Globe surrounded by most of his most famous characters. Except I can't find Hamlet. And I'm not sure who is peeking out of the casket/coffin/thing, unless maybe it's Bassanio. There are four cross-dressing women and I could only think of three (Rosalind, Portia and Viola) so I looked it up and it must be Jessica. Jessica! I'd forgotten she dressed as a boy.

The books josanpq found for me look wonderful and I will no doubt be talking about them when I read them.

By the time we left lunacy_gal's place, it was snowing hard. I came home and made dinner: chicken baked in sour cream and dill with rice and salad. Marion and Vicky came over to watch Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars, and Marion told us about the Doctor Who convention she recently went to in Chicago. maaseru and explodedteabag joined us for supper.

I fear I have exceeded my daily calories. Ahh, the joys of Christmastime.

Castle of the day: I have a few choices. Well, I could say "The Virgins and Castle", which is the pub (est. 1777) where we had supper. Delicious roast duck with mashed potatoes, fresh peas and carrots, and a green salad with tomatoes and cucumber.

Or I could cite the castle in Sunnydale California that I saw in the Buffy episode "Buffy vs. Dracula".

Or I could pretend that we actually saw a castle in the beginning of As You Like It, which I saw in Stratford-on-Avon at the Courtyard Theatre. And enjoyed very much indeed. And will have things to say about.

Watched quite a bit of Buffy today: "Buffy vs Dracula", "Real Me", "The Replacement", and "Out of My Mind". Loved the Spike scenes - do I sound like a broken record there yet? Loved the way Giles seems to have metamorphosed from librarian-teach-watcher to a sensei or guru. In the first episode there, I thought Sarah Michelle Geller as Buffy was showing the body language and look of Eliza Dushku, but seemed more like herself later on. And Spike and Harmony make a very funny combination.