Charloween

I had a plan today to do a proper post about all the theatre I saw this week, just like I planned today to figure out what to put in my presentation for when I defend my thesis*, and also like I'd planned to go back to the ACD archive and find more awesome stuff about post-war Holmes fans... but instead I've been sitting under a tree in Queen's Park, shivering a bit in the cold**, enjoying being outside on a day that isn't humid, stealing wifi and noodling on the internet.

I like parks. I like parks in rage of steal-able wifi even more.

*Playing the vids, mumbling something about Van Gogh, and finishing off with jazz hands is sadly not an option.
**IDK, there's almost windchill today. One thing you can count on in Toronto, it's wind.

So, while I'm here and while I'm typing: Stratford! I saw: Kiss Me Kate again this past Sunday (with firstgold!), The Tempest and As You Like It on Wednesday (with Mum and my brother) and we hung around Wednesday night so we three could catch Peter Pan yesterday afternoon. ( Words words words about words. And plays. Plays full of words. )

Back to Stratford this weekend for a surprise cheap-ticket weekend. Saw Julius Caesar again (it makes even less sense than the first time) and Midsummer Night's Dream (F*CKING AWESOME). Dream has just started previews (it opens officially on the 21st), but it's 100% worth seeing and I need an excuse (any excuse) to go back. It's a really energetic production and everyone on stage was having fun with it (which is kind of usual for Stratford, but it's still so nice to see).

It was cool on its own, but it was even more neat to see Caesar and Dream back to back because of the casting crossover: Tom Rooney was good as Cassius and omg oh so good as a Brian Molko-ish Puck (...it worked), and Geraint Wyn Davies was a fine Caesar and a fabulous Bottom (with a Welsh accent!). Oh, rep theatre.

I do hope they-at-Stratford film this year's production of Dream: I think it's too good to lose after this year. There are so many neat ideas and fun approaches and clever stagings in this production - and it all holds together, too. The acting is strong, the fogger is used as a prop on stage, and the curtain call is a full-company dance number.

\o/ GO SEE IT. It'll be on stage until the end of October. And take me with you when you go!

After a week of pure (exhausting) awesome - that I'd say peaked with giggle fits while watching a professional production of Julius Caesar* - the only sane response is to cuddle into bed for an extended period of time.

Which is awesome when you don't have to work the next day. (Eep!) But! Fun was had, sights were toured (touristed?), plays were watched and freakishly good weather was most enthusiastically enjoyed.


*Never take slashers to a sausage fest. And never feed them The Importance of Being Earnest as a matinee, either.

This weekend I went with firstgold to see Hamlet and Caesar and Cleopatra at the Stratford Festival. Caesar and Cleopatra was written by George Bernard Shaw, and it's everything you'd expect from one of his works: light, witty and a fun ol' time peppered with digs at the British. It was excellent. Christopher Plummer (as Caesar) was fantastic. The costumes were gorgeous and the staging was simple and made good use of the Festival Theatre's stage.

This year's Hamlet, however, is beyond excellent. It's a production where every choice that was made I agreed with - and I anticipated few of their choices. But as the show progressed, I really found little to disagree with. The setting made sense (pre-WWI Denmark), the costumes were gorgeous and the acting, ah, the acting.

The best part of this Hamlet - and what makes it so different and so much better than your average production - is that everyone on stage was having fun. They kept the jokes (they kept nearly everything, it was a 3-hour production with the intermission), and they had us laughing quite a bit through the entire thing. Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia were a functional family unit in their first few scenes, Claudius and Gertrude were all honeymoony (in a non-creepy way) and Hamlet, ah, Hamlet.

Ben Carlson plays Hamlet and does it very, very well. He's not a broody mope, nor is he a naive whiner, he's just upset and overwhelmed. His madness is hysterics (a very manly form!), the kind of overtired, overwhelmed, confused flail that happens when you can't even begin to see how to start coping. Some Hamlets are moody whiners with entitlement complexes and weird daddy issues (even weirder since it says in the play that Hamlet is 30). Not this Hamlet. He acts his age!

All of the characters are well grounded and quite credible. Much of this credibility comes from how well the cast works together (oh, and they do), but the sets have a very large part to play as well. The first scene with Gertrude and Claudius (where they get Hamlet to stay at home rather than going back to school) is at a Christmas party, not in a stuffy throne room. Everyone mixes and mingles and it is not stiff - they're having a ball! Later, when Claudius and Laertes plot to rig the duel with Hamlet, they're talking over a game of billiards.* That setting makes the king and the student equals and co-conspirators; but the idea of the billiards room as a separate space for guys is borne out as the scene progresses.

*And kudos to the stage crew for dragging a full billiards table onto the stage so quickly and silently. Yikes.

If you're anywhere in Southern Ontario, or have the means to get to Southern Ontario: see this Hamlet! It's been getting rave reviews for a reason. A very good reason. It's imaginative, takes chances that work, and doesn't concern itself with consciously being a Good And Worthy Production. Rather, it gathers a bunch of people who want to have fun telling a damn good story, and they end with one of the best versions of the play that I've come across. Magic. Absolute magic.

1. I need more Moonlight and I need it now. It has unexpectedly eaten my brain. There aren't many shows that'll have your vampire main character bouncing up and down all giddy and happy. ( minor spoilers, if anyone else even watches this thing )

2. The drain in the tub is acting hinky again so I'm going to maybe have to call the super on this one. I was having such a good day, too. Grrrr.

3. The History class is cancelled on Monday, which means I can use all that time to get ahead on the Massively Evil History Paper OF DOOM (And Also Pirates).

4. I bought an SATA II drive BUT only an SATA enclosure for said drive. *facepalm*

5. The "Shakespeare in Performance" class is going to be v. interesting, because it's Shakespeare's more controversial plays as taught from a director/producer perspective, not an acting or English lit (*hiss*) point of view. Our major final project is to propose an alternate staging for one of the five plays we're reading this term... which, to me, is just like saying "Go Forth And Write A Shakespeare Xover!". The Tempest, set in the FBI! A Civil War-era The Taming of the Shrew! The Merchant of Venice in a high school locker room! Measure for Measure in the White House! Othello... in the Old West!

(Speaking of Othello, the prof was telling us about a recent British version of that play, with Christopher Eccelston as Iago. The prof wanted to know if anyone knew of "this actor" and what else he'd been in. Three guesses who spoke up.)