A stick-figure Shakespeare comic by Mya Lixian Gosling
A trifecta of relatively obscure plays today!
I’ve seen Henry VIII and King John performed lived twice each now, and Love’s Labour’s four times, not counting various filmed productions. I can also say “honorificabilitudinitatibus” forwards and backwards. My Shakespeare geek creds are strong.
Let’s take a look a the English king everyone forgets Shakespeare wrote a play about: King John!
Consulting pocket dramaturg: Kate Pitt
Confession: I drew this because I just finished reading yet another popular history of the early Plantagenet kings. I will never forgive Shakespeare for not writing a play about Henry II, although The Lion in Winter more than makes up for it.
Also, they were apparently all red-headed.
Remember when I put together that infographic on which Shakespearean character spends the most time dead onstage? Well, I decided to do another one, this time on which Shakespearean character spends the most time dying onstage. Here are the results of my haphazard investigation!
EDIT: Thanks to Brad Filippone, who noted I forgot Salisbury from 1 Henry VI. (My apologies to Nick Asbury, my first and most memorable Salisbury.)
My initial thought was that the #1 spot would go to Antony, who, as we know, is really bad at killing himself. I totally forgot that Edmund is dying onstage during much of the final King Lear exposition. So, take a bow, Edmund! You're the Prolonged Shakespearean Dying champion!
Special mention to Desdemona, who also made the top ten list of characters who spend the most time dead onstage. That's a really... special achievement.
Poor Desdemona.
So, last month one of my Tumblr followers posed the following question:
jmujaneway asked:
Hiya! Someone at lunch said there's a debate as to which Shakespeare character spends the most time dead on stage. I figured you'd know! Please help?
I offered up my best guesses (Caesar and Desdemona) and then Tumblr took over, with nellololol going to far as to do some in-depth research and provide us with some line counts. This was far too fun to leave alone, though, so I've done my own line-counting and here are the results!
Now, Bassianus and Humphrey are somewhat debatable, as they can conceivably spend part of their "dead" time hidden in a pit or behind bed curtains respectively. However, I have seen both languish on stage in person, so they are included. Conversely, I don't think I've ever seen a Romeo and Juliet production that actually included the "real live body" of Tybalt in the final scene, but I have heard of those that have, and that have similarly had a "real live body" of Caesar in the funeral scene.
If we go by the has-to-be-on-stage-dead-the-entire-time-no-chance-of-being-swapped-out-for-a-dummy matrix, however, the winner is Desdemona. Take a bow Desd-- oh wait, you can't. You're dead.
The lovely Ladies of Angiers up at the Stratford Festival have been getting ready to audition for next season's production of The Sound of Music:
Naturally this made me wonder what a King John themed version of The Sound of Music would look like. Here is the result:
I expect it to be ready for an off-Broadway tryout in time for next season.
In my last post I outlined some of the fun adventures I had at the Stratford Festival this year. Today I'm going to take a closer look at four of the Shakespeare productions I saw, starting with King Lear, starring Colm Feore.
I am a very technically-focused and analytical theatre-goer, so I very rarely lose myself entirely in a play. This doesn't diminish my enjoyment (in fact, I think it enhances it) but it does mean I am rarely moved to tears by what I see on stage. And I'm not going to go so far as to say Feore's Lear made me cry, but there was definitely something in the air that made my eyes a bit itchy.
If I am slow to cry, I am quick to laugh, especially when an actor finds humor in a line or situation that I otherwise would never have considered humorous. The cast of King John, especially Graham Abbey's wry and swaggering Bastard, managed to unearth every latent laugh in what, on the surface anyways, appears to be a somewhat dour history play. I enjoyed myself tremendously, much more than I had anticipated.
The joy of going to a repertory company like the Stratford Festival for numerous years is that you see each actor in numerous different roles, and become familiar with different facets of their talent and stage presence. One of things that has always enamored Geraint Wyn Davies to me is his propensity to utilize his native Welsh accent. (As a proud, if somewhat diluted 1/32nd Welsh patriot, I am particularly susceptible to Welsh accents.) I hasten to point out that Mr. Wyn Davies's excellent Antony showed few signs of hailing from across the Severn... but I kind of wish he had.
Director Chris Abraham's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream could have been expressly designed to push every single button possessed by Shakespearean purists. It plays with the text, adding lines to establish a framing device setting the play as an entertainment put on to celebrate the wedding of a gay couple. Lysander is played by a woman and as a woman, making Hermia's father's objection to his daughter's marriage a comment on marriage equality. Titania is played as a woman, but by one of two rather muscular men.
There are cell phones, pop songs, food fights, sight gags, and an on-stage pond that numerous people fall into. It's cluttered and overwhelming and OH MY GOODNESS IT IS SO MUCH FUN. I have never been a particular fan of A Midsummer Night's Dream, apart from the Pyramus and Thisbe bit, but this production instantly won a place in my heart. It is so full of joy, so full of fun, and is such an open celebration of love that, appropriately enough, I fell in love with it.
If you want "traditional" Shakespeare (whatever that might be), this is probably not the production for you. But if you want A LOT OF PURE, UNADULTERATED FUN wrapped up in a Shakespeare-shaped package, I can't think of a better thing to do than to see this show.
.....
Is that enough gushing for now? Check back on Friday when I'll take a look at some of the non-Shakespearean productions. Also, take a look at my other Stratford Festival comics!
Well, when we last left the Ladies, they had just fended off yet another attempt by John and Philip to strongarm them into declaring an allegiance...
OK, so somewhere along the way I totally abandoned the actual plot of King John, but never mind. This it how it should have ended. Everyone's much happier this way. Don't argue.
Thanks to Brigit Wilson, Carmen Grant, and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings for letting me co-opt their Elizabethan alter-egos for a week!
We follow up my post on Monday with a further look at the scandalous lives of the Ladies of Angiers (Brigit Wilson, Carmen Grant, and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings), liberated from the pages of King John.
On the left they are gambling with the Earl of Salisbury, while on the right Chatillon is serving them drinks at the poolside. Angiers is clearly the party town of the Loire Valley.
Anyways, here they are, back in King John again for some more negotiations.
I hasten to point out that, apart from the compulsive gambling habit, this comic is, in fact, totally true to the plot of King John, which could be uncharitably subtitled as "The Play Where Not One, But Two Kings Kind Of Act Like Idiots".
We round off the Ladies of Angiers on Friday. Stop by! There will be drinks*.
*There will not be actual drinks.
