Pilgrimage &c

Now I've fallen slack with the updates, oi! Impossible to go back and reconstruct all, so some highlights . . .

I did get to interview the director of the Ovo production of Twelfth Night at the Bridewell Theatre, though technological difficulties did their darndest to disrupt the process throughout - first, unable to access internet/ email made it so I wasn't aware of the appointed time until two hours prior and hence wasn't as prepared as I would have liked to have been (though still somewhat prepared and I've had luck in my life with "winging" certain things, here too). I was able to record the interview but then somehow lost the file when attempting to upload later - very late too - that night, probably pushed a wrong button in my sleepy brain-fog state of mind. But fortunately I've been able to largely reconstruct the interview based on my written list of questions and memory, and even some bits from the program, which were gone over in the discussion. So, no direct quotes but jists instead. I also have a script of the production to study.

The production was wonderful - a few flaws but genuinely delightful - a musical version of Twelfth Night. There is something that an amateur - or at least a small - company can bring to a performance that polish sometimes loses - heart, passion, fire. What was very interesting here is that - for anyone familiar with the play - they cut the lines at the end about Malvolio having a suit against the person who holds Viola/ Cesario's clothes but still managed to keep him a potent threat at the end of the play. All the characters came out at the end for a dance number - the production, set in the twenties, used period musical numbers rather than original music - and Malvolio danced, sulking, angry, ominous, without smiling, without singing along with the rest, and there was this bit where the company formed two lines and he was at the head of one, really clouding the celebration. Very neat. Other notable elements to this production but this most striking. A really great fun show, very vaudevilian and some shoot from the hip improv, a master of ceremonies opening the show and occasionally interjecting. He introduced the setting and I most loved how he established the "dancing twins," Viola and Sebastian, who of course looked nothing alike - "here they are, as alike as . . . two cheeks from one bottom!" Lots of fun gags like this, not worn at all, what Peter Brook might label as "Rough Theatre." Some of the songs were powerfully situated - the closing of the first act, after Malvolio's been duped with the letter, has him come out with a mannequin draped with one of Olivia's dresses and he sings, pitifully, humorously, "I want to be loved by you." Some technical difficulties led to humor too - a roof leaking for real onto an imagined deck of a ship during intermission led me to josh with the MoC - who was mopping - "swabbing the deck, eh?" Anyway lots of fun memories from this show.

Twelfth Night at Regent's Park not so much fun - major alterations were the usual "shipwreck" moved to open instead of "If music be the food of love" and updating the "we three" songs to more recognizable bawdy bits with lots of reference to male and female parts and such, but here serving little. Hard to describe how this show failed, still thinking about it . . . partly an inconsistency of style as opposed to what could have been a powerful juxtaposition of styles, if that makes sense at all.

Merry Wives at the Globe was simply delightful. I honestly didn't like that play much in reading, though a bit more fun acting Falstaff in Interpretations of Shakespeare (a theatre class) but here it was brought to life. I've got to go back, oddly I caught more alterations with this show which I hadn't really meant to focus on than with any other . . . a subplot gone (the tricking of the tavern host), pretty sure the character of Bardolph entirely deleted, a bit where a schoolmaster teaches a young child latin meant to be funny but perhaps awkward for a modern audience to hear a child say or percieve as funny "whorum, harem" and the like. Oddly the line of the priest near the end saying he'll look after the childrens' parts (for the staged tricking of Falstaff) perhaps got something like the laugh that would've been in that earlier scene. So, no one loses anything, no property, no job, no children saying anything filthy - a sanitization to bring out the farce, make it more of the sitcom the program advertized it as. Still, very funny!

AND! AND! I made my pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon, a two day trip (one full day really). The loveliest place in the world, I think. I got to see Shakespeare's birthplace and his grave - or the stone floor above it - and well it really did end up feeling like a pilgrimage. The birthplace especially crafted this story through its museum like peices and walk through as if Shakespeare's life were a logical loop leading him from Stratford and back to Stratford again. Some of the guides were funny . . . one saying that after the Globe burnt down (I think in 1616 but I'd have to check) it was never rebuilt until recently of course (not true) and another saying how one day Shakespeare got this idea, this really startling and powerful idea, that he'd go to London and start a theatre . . . (so not true, he became a part of a theatre already in the process of establishing itself) . . . but I bit my tongue and didn't even raise an eyebrow and let everyone bask in the miracle myth. I got to see two Royal Shakespeare Company productions, Merchant of Venice (not so good) and Taming of the Shrew (superb). The first maybe failed because the director - I've learned - doesn't believe in characterization with Shakespeare or even blocking, thinking these interfere with an organic or more "natural" production, which would somehow be trueer and more alive . . . not so. Shrew took the it's entirely a play that exposes misogyny and that's all it's about tack, but still a very good show, made the link between prostitution as the first and last bastion of misogyny (the program had images of the sex industry from SoHo here in London, which was also reflected in part of the set) and what was especially surprising was the juxtaposition of styles which worked here, the commedia del arte farce of most scenes against the breaking of Katherina, which was done very darkly. The only thing is that I think "the breaking" peaked too soon with a very powerful image . . . there's this bit where Grumio (a servant) torments her with the idea of food (she hasn't eaten) and she finally says something like "then the mustard or the beef or what you will" and here, on the line "what you will" she, well, "makes herself available" for Grumio, who, just as broken as she (he was the horse Petruccio rode in on) rejects the offer, shown his own pain. Maybe because this bit was so powerful some of the later scenes had this sort of floating, no where left to go energy. I did stay for the talk back here and got to ask about alterations to text or "how performance choices might necessitate alterations" and though I had this vague sense that the first half was a bit light I'd only caught a few changes and anway, most of the cuts were made for the practical reason of the first half otherwise running 150mns and unfortunately the rest of the answer turned to an error on my part: I'd thought a few lines had been reassigned from Petr. to Hortensio but apparently one of the Folios has the lines as Hortensio's and that was the text they'd used - hard with their being so many texts with some of these plays. But anway a powerful production that I'll be thinking about for a long, long time.

This week will hopefully wrap up the Irving studies, though I may perhaps need to return briefly to get some quotes to flesh out some ideas. Unfortunately maybe I took the approach of reading the criticism before the scripts and most of what I have from there is about acting styles, some stuff relatable to feminist theory, and lots of stuff on scenery that's very interesting that I'd hoped to relate to alterations to text but most of the alterations I've run across - though I haven't worked through much yet here - is the almost re-writing of female characters into so-called "proper" ladies. But I still have more to go and at worst I can save this by contextualization, taking what I've read in the light of the works of other, more moder scholars. I think the Olivier/ Gielgud studies should go much more smoothly having begun to learn how best to approach. Time wise it would much easier if copies weren't so expensive - it's actually about an American dollar per page! - making it so I have to type out everything that I think is relevant - and of course it's not always easy to know what's relevant, or anyway what might prove relevant. But I think anyway with all the preparation I've done for this project the purpose is partly to train me to do such work again, better - in all senses a learning experience.

Explored around Westminster (yes I saw the Big Ben clock!), St. John's Smith Square (architecturally serene), St. James Park and Buckingham Palace . . . lovely places. And my sense of the city keeps improving . . .