Some random thoughts of randomness

1. My dad bought a new bike recently. He's always been a big walker, and goes around the White Estates neighborhood where I grew up, picking up trash with his grabbin-claw or whatever that thing is called and a Wal-Mart sack. He enjoys biking around now too, although I don't think he can still pick up trash, because wouldn't that be kind of hard? You might have to pedal in circles around, say, a cast-off paper McDonald's bag, before you could actually pick it up. ANYWAY, my mom was talking about getting a bike for herself so that she could join him, and I brightly suggested, "Why don't you get a bicycle built for two?"

My dad, who was sitting in an armchair with his eyes fixed intently on SportsCenter, snorted. Mom cast him a brief glance and said, "The last time we rode on a two-person bike, on Mackinac Island? He said he had to do all the work."

"I did," my father said emphatically, his focus on the television unwavering.

"Well, maybe you could promise to pedal really hard," I said soothingly.

My mother sat thinking for a moment and then announced, "I think I'd rather just get a rickshaw. We've been married forty-nine years. Why bother with pretense?"

2. Our new school year starts this Thursday, September 1. Meelyn will be a senior and Aisling will be a junior. I AM STARING DOWN THE TWIGS OF AN EMPTY NEST, PEOPLE.

3. Since school is starting up, I think I'll start Menu Plan Monday next Monday, which is Labor Day, so maybe I'll start next Tuesday. Just keepin' it real.

4. Dobby was barking at the people across the street, who were doing nothing more threatening than sitting on their front porch, talking and drinking iced tea. I know, I can't believe the nerve of those trolls either. Dobby barked at them so violently, he fell off the back of the couch onto the floor. Epic fail.

5. I'm teaching a class in British literature this first semester, plus my usual Shakespeare class. The Shakespeare play for this semester is Julius Caesar, and by some amazing happenstance, because I promise I did not know about this earlier, the Indiana Repertory Theater is doing Julius Caesar this fall! I am very excited, because although I have the three extant copies of Julius Caesar on DVD (one starring Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and the other starring Charlton Heston as Marc Antony and the other one starring no one I've heard of before and ALL THREE OF THEM SUCK LIKE A SHOP VAC.

6. This morning in water aerobics class, the music of the day was the greatest hits of Elton John and I knew the lyrics to every single song. Did some great in-pool jumping jacks to "Philadelphia Freedom."

7. I've been accused by several people of shamefully neglecting my blog. It's been a very busy summer - that's the only excuse I have. I'll try to do better.

"A plague on both your houses"

I went with Katie on a scouting expedition to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival at the University of Illinois at Bloomington and we saw a wonderful production of Romeo & Juliet that just took. My. Breath. Almost literally, since the perfect little theater is an outdoor venue and when the play started at seven thirty, it was still about ninety-two degrees outside.

My favorite Romeo and Juliet is still the 1996 production, directed by the genius Baz Luhrmann, and starring Leonardo di Caprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. For all of you who wonder about Leonardo's ability to pull off a believable Romeo, just watch it, is all I can say. And Claire Danes has a way with the innocent and girlish, yet steel-spined Juliet that will break your heart and make you think back to the days of your first love, I guarantee. There are lots of stars in this production, including a sinister and scarily nasty-sexy John Leguizamo in the role of Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, but the best of them all is the above pictured Harold Pirreneau as Romeo's best friend, Mercutio. He is full of life, right up until the moment he dies.

"A plague...on both...your houses," he gasps out, clutching the mortal wound Tybalt has given him with a switchblade. He turns, dazed and disbelieving, and mutters, "They have made worm's meat of me." Then he wheels back around, summoning his remaining strength and screams in the white-hot fury of one young and dying before his time, "A PLAGUE...ON BOTH....YOUR HOUSES!"

It's one of the most arresting moments of cinema I've seen, and hands-down Shakespeare's best curse, with Caesar's ghost in Julius Caesar coming in a distant second with the ominous, "Thou shalt see me at Phillippi."

The Mercutio in the Illinois Shakespeare Festival production we just saw was very, very good (played by a young actor named Santiago Sosa) and his moment to utter is the moment I always wait for in Romeo & Juliet, one of my own personal tests by which I judge the performance, asking myself Did that raise the hairs on the back of my neck and render me momentarily incapable of inhaling?

Santiago Sosa did a creditable job, although I have to say like there's nothing better than the banshee scream under Luhrmann's direction. Yet. I'll be happy to attend as many performance as I can, so as to compare and contrast, of course. My pleasure.

Here, for your own pleasure, is the very clip I've been talking about.

(And by the way, Katie and I both agreed that the Illinois Shakespeare Festival is a very worthy off-year trip for my students and their parents, great for the summers when we aren't traveling to Ontario.)

I'm just as sick of snow as the next person, but...

I found this YouTube video of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, Will's hometown, on another site this morning and had to imbed it here. Because even though it's snow and winter is unspeakably vile, this is still Stratford, right?

There are several really great views of Shakespeare's childhood-into-adulthood home on Henley Street, some beautiful stills of the spire of Trinity Church where he was both baptized and interred, a few peeks at the snowy garden (absolutely radiant in summer) that marks the site of New Place, the house he bought and came to live in at his retirement, plus some nice looks at the Guild Hall, including a great shot of the second story windows that comprise the King Edward IV Grammar School where young Will learned his Latin and his love for Ovid. If you're a Shakespeare fan, it's a lovely mini-tour. If you're not, well, it's just a bunch of dreary snow and don't bother.

By the way, I don't think that slushie stand was there when Will was a lad....

A Will to watch

My favorite Shakespeare class ever, this one was. By the end of the eight week workshop, I'm usually ready to fling myself into a chair and lie there, panting. But this time, I miss the kids. They were a lot of fun. I loved hearing their comments and I loved answering their questions and I especially loved, when a split-second blip of Hamlet and Ophelia being INAPPROPRIATE with one another flashed onto the television screen, everyone immediately clapped their hands over their faces when I shrieked, "CLOSE YOUR EYES!!!" like we'd been rehearsing it since the first day of class. I told their mothers later it would have been funny if I hadn't been so mortified. Darn Kenneth Branagh and his use of flashback sequences to explain the back story!

Above are Ellen, Olivia, Joe and Bernadette, four of the twenty-five students who made my first semester workshop such a pleasure from the first class to the last. [And on the screen up there is Derek Jacobi as Claudius in Kenneth Branagh's 1996 production.]

Shakespeare jewelry

This is part of the necklace I'm wearing today, laid out for photographic purposes on the cute runner that's on my dining room table. I got it from a vendor at Etsy.com, which is just one of the best places on the internet for finding, well, anything fun or cute or interesting you'd like to find: If you want one and can't make it yourself, someone else probably can. Which is how I came by this necklace. I did a search for "Shakespeare jewelry" and this is one of the many items that popped up. I was drawn to it at once, mostly because I love that quote, "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." (Macbeth himself is the "something wicked," by the way.) Secondly, I really like that bronzey metal, and third, I love that jaunty little skull dangling from the end. I don't think it belongs to Hamlet's Yorick, though, because by all accounts, he was a very decent fellow.

The necklace is on a twelve inch chain, the tag is as long as my pinky and the skull is as big as the tip of that same finger. It cost something like $10.00, which included the shipping. Very clever

There and back again

Oh, you just have to enjoy a good toll road - three dollars will open up the door to Canada, or at least it will open the door that leads to the door where the very intimidating border crossing agent, armed and wearing Kevlar, will step out of her booth and ask in a very severe voice: "Do you have anything to declare? Tobacco or alcohol? Firearms or other weapons?"

"Why?" my husband asked anxiously. "Will we need them?"

The border crossing guard permitted herself a very small smile, the kind that didn't push her cheeks up. "I sincerely hope not," she replied. "Could I have your passports, please? And please remove your sunglasses."

I whipped off my sunglasses and my husband pushed his to the top of his head. "She doesn't know that I'm much more handsome without them," he said to me in a low voice out of the corner of his mouth.

I was digging into my binder for the passports, which I had pulled out and touched every hour upon the hour for the past five hours, just to make sure they were still there. "She's terribly, terribly polite, which is somehow scarier than rudeness," I said with a slight quiver in my voice. "It makes you think she'd say, 'I'm so sorry I have to do this' just before she pulled her gun and nailed you right between the eyes."

The border guard carefully scrutinized our passports and then demanded that we open up the doors on the van so that she could look inside. Meelyn and Aisling, comfortably ensconced in their seats amid oceans of pillows, blankets and crinkly Jolly Rancher wrappers, looked abashed as the agent peered in at them.

"Hi," said Meelyn sheepishly. Aisling just stared with round eyes.

"Hello," the guard said smartly. "Having a good time, girls?"

"Yes," answered Meelyn in a small voice that indicated that her father and I were kidnappers who were preparing to sell her into white slavery in Toronto.

The guard closed the van door and went back to her booth. "Where are you going?"

My husband and I did this strange thing we've developed through nearly twenty years of marriage: We answered in unison, using nearly the same words. It only happens when we're nervous and probably makes us look as furtive and guilty as homemade sin, like we've rehearsed our story well in advance and got it down pat.

"The Stratford Shakespeare Festival," we chimed.

"How long are you staying?" she demanded.

"Until Saturday," we replied, looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes. Furtively. Guiltily.

"Have a good time," she barked at us. The two of us nodded like bobble-head dolls. Oh, we would have a good time, because the border guard gave the impression that if we should be so foolish as to have a bad time? She would personally hunt us down and beat the snot out of us.

We drove on across the gorgeous bridge, Lake Huron a perfect, ineffable blue under the sunny September sky. It was a wonderful trip. We stayed in the most hideous motel I've ever set foot in, went on two fabulous field trips, ate at some delightful restaurants, learned what peameal is, and saw two plays, one of which I loved and had to be pried out of my theater seat so that the theater could close for the evening and the other which I hated. Although don't get me wrong: Half the fun of watching Shakespeare, whether on DVD or onstage, is comparing it to other performances and stacking them up against one another, so it's all good.

We're back home, safe and sound, and feeling a teensy bit blue.

Next summer, the four of us hope to do a scouting trip to Stratford with the aim of finding, above all things, a different place for everyone to stay in 2012, because I firmly expect the place where we stayed this time will have crumbled to the ground under the weight of its own dirt and mold. Embarrassing, that was.

Oh, and we're hoping to see Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor, too. No sense in coming on an expedition and not seeing a couple of shows. They're just too good to miss, even the bad ones.

And we're off!!!

Or we will be in about forty-five minutes, anyway. The girls were both sound asleep by about 11:00 p.m., but my husband and I puttered around, packing our suitcase, my husband marveling at the enormous amount of cosmetics, unguents, lotions and hoo-doo it takes for me to maintain the appearance of a modest forty-something mom instead of, say, a gargoyle.

"We should have rented a U-Haul trailer," he told me earnestly.

I was tempted to go all Taming of the Shrew on him, but we saw that two years ago.

We were all up by 5:15, looking like shiny, happy people as my friend Karen says. Right now we're waiting for the rest of our caravan party to get here -- they're not due for about twenty more minutes. The van is crammed full of our luggage (are we really only going to be gone for three days?) and goodies for my tour people. Those are a big secret, though, and I hope they'll all be delighted when they see them.

So, my dears, until Sunday, when I'll be back with lots of pictures to post and plays to talk about, parting is such sweet sorrow.

Counting down the hours with a hey and a ho and a hey nonny-no

It's been months. So many months that it hardly seemed worth counting because that just made the wait seem longer rather than shorter.

But here we are now, leaving so soon, so very soon, that I'm wondering how to get everything done I need to do; time is flying so, with wings the size of an eagle's and the speed of a hummingbird's.

Stratford waits for us -- The Tempest! As You Like It! -- and I only wish I could feel more convinced that our passports won't decide to climb out of the car when we stop for lunch and hitchhike back home. I'm always convinced that passports are plotting some wicked scheme that will involve me standing helplessly at an international border while an armed guard with a big rifle and one raised eyebrow listens to me explain why I thought it would be a good idea to lead a travel group to Canada.

Worries about my passport remind me of going to Italy with Ma when I was fifteen. We went in November, so the weather was soft and cool. I took several sweaters with cowl necks so that I could keep warm, but also so that no one could see my secret shame, which were these strange passport-carrying devices Ma had found in the Harriet Carter catalog or somesuch place.

The secret shame was an opaque plastic packet, just big enough to hold a passport and some folding money. It attached to one's bra straps with snaps. This left the pocket dangling in one's cleavage, although I didn't really have any cleavage to speak of at age fifteen, which left the pocket banging around on my chest instead of resting cozily on my bosom. It was as much of a torment as Laura Ingalls's long underwear, and every time I wanted to get my money out, Ma had to turn around and throw her London Fog trench coat over me like a magician's cape so that I could gracelessly fumble under my sweater to find my lire. Oh, it was a lot of fun, but not quite as much fun as being hit in the kidneys with an umbrella by a nun on a city bus who must have thought I looked like I was hiding something. Which, of course, I was.

Ma was totally vindicated, however, when someone tried to pick my pocket when we were standing in St. Peter's Square right before we went to the Sistine Chapel. He came up with nothing but a Bonnie Bell Tootsie Roll Lip Smacker and was so disgusted, he threw the lip balm on the ground at my feet and swore at me in Italiano. Heh.

What the people in my tour group don't know is that I've made passport pockets for ALL of them, even the dads and the boys, who need to immediately go out and buy bras so that they'll have something to snap their artfully concealed pockets to. Which should create many memories, don't you think? Won't they all just be delighted with their little gifts?

Little bit of Rosalind on my mind

A few random thoughts, nothing enough to write an entire post about....

The Stratford trip is coming up in a week -- ONE WEEK -- and I am flying around getting things ready for the group and for my own family. Must not, on any account, forget to call the bank and tell them we plan to use our debit cards internationally. Also would be a good idea to remember to bring passports. And I need to get the mail stopped. Wondering about As You Like It and if the actress playing Rosalind will also be able to pull off her role as Ganymede.

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In my city, tattoo places are springing up EVERYWHERE. As the recession grows worse, other businesses fail -- a small used car lot, a former dry cleaner's establishment, a Midas muffler place, a Mom-n-Pop donut shop -- and abandon their premises, leaving them open for these awful tattoo place to move in. The one in the picture above is the nicest place of all, the one place out of all of them that doesn't look you could get a free case of hepatitis B thrown in with your new ink.

One of the others, sadly, is near my house in the historic district, in a building that used to be the office for the used car lot I mentioned. The car lot was small and cute and there were always flowers planted outside in tubs and in the tiny yard. But now? Ugh. The building has been painted black and the name of the joint is painted on the outdoor sign, unprofessionally. It looks like the kind of place that might send you off with the added bonus of typhus with your hep B.

How many tattoo businesses can one city of 60,000 people support?

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Today is our first day of school. I have a junior and a sophomore. PSATs are coming up next month, SATs in February. This is our tenth year of homeschooling. The dining room table is piled nearly up to the ceiling with school books. Meelyn is doing geometry and Aisling is working on French. I am trying to summon the will to soldier through the next hour until 5:00 p.m. when I will legitimately be able to have a glass of wine. I should go fold some towels. The only problem is that the refrigerator where the wine lives is on the way to the laundry room.

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Today is Nanny and Poppy's 48th wedding anniversary -- two more years 'til the Big one. It will take at least that long to convince Poppy that Pat, Angie, my husband and I should throw them a party. It may take that long for him to agree to having a nice little write-up in the Courier-Times. I should get started on this, like, yesterday.

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The girls are practicing saying "à tout à l'heure" really fast so that it won't sound like saying, in English, "I'LL.....SEE.....YOU.....LATER!" They were laughing and laughing, but both of them stopped when I said, "I hope you'll be able to use this admittedly limited French when you're in college; it would be so wonderful if you could both go abroad to study for a semester." They both looked at me like a couple of owls. "Wow, that would be really far from home," said Meelyn, a worried look on her face. "Sacré bleu!" Aisling breathed solemnly. Awwww....they are mes petits choux, alors.

Blown away

I've been doing some online research on The Tempest through sources like the IMDb and have finally decided to go ahead and purchase the 1979 production directed by the artsy late film director Derek Jarman -- I know! It was a big step! Now we can all sleep soundly tonight! -- who will probably turn out to be too much for me to wrap my head around: not only does his portrayal of Shakespeare's script include "considerable nudity, mostly male" (why?), but I often find that artsy things frequently strike me as pretentious, giving that air of trying so hard to be avant-garde. In the many reviews I've read, Jarman's Tempest either takes a beating or earns lyrical praise from both professional and amateur film critics, so I guess we'll see. Thankfully, it isn't very expensive.

One positive thought in all this is that no matter how many naked man-bums and willies I'm forced to behold, Jarman's version will have to be better than the BBC's made-for-TV version, directed by John Gorrie and starring no one that I've ever heard of before. This one was released in 1980, and if it can be compared to every other version the BBC filmed for the edification of British schoolkids, it will be a record stinker that will be painful to watch. I might find myself wishing for a little nudity to relieve the unremitting boredom.

HOWEVER, as captivating as all this is, I just found out that there's a new version of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren and due for release by Disney through Touchstone pictures this very fall.

At reading this, I jumped up from my chair and clicked my heels in the air several times. Yay, a new Tempest! Yay, no reports of gratuitious nudity! Yay, a (reportedly) faithful adaptation of the original script! I gamboled about the room until I grew breathless, which was in approximately seventeen seconds. Then I sat back down to read more about this production and felt that I'd been swamped by a tsunami.

This production, which is directed by Julie Traymor, stars Helen Mirren as.....wait for it.....Prospera. Not Prospero, PROSPERA. As in, Prospero is now a woman. Yes. Helen, you traitor! Now, depending upon your level of interest in and committment to the works of William Shakespeare, this news will either make you say, "Shut UP!!! That sounds FASCINATING!" or "I just remembered that I need to go to Walgreen's.com to check out their coupon page." If you're like me, you'll immediately fall to the floor and start biting the legs of the chair you were sitting in.

Okay, I'm assuming you're all back in your chairs again.

Julie Traymor also wrote the screenplay for this production, which smacks of nepotism in a particularly incestuous way. And just read this snippet of a review:

Prospera's throne is usurped by her brother, and she is sent off on a ship with
her four-year-old daughter. They find themselves stranded on an island devoid of
society. A power struggle develops between Caliban and Prospera due to her
efforts to become a father figure to Miranda.

This nearly made me fall to the floor again -- it's like throwing some chicken nuggets on a baking sheet in the oven and basting them with margarine and calling the resulting mess "Julia Child's roasted chicken" -- but the news that Russell Brand plays the role of Trinculo sent the tornado warning sirens blaring in my head at an alarming volume.

Russell Brand, for those of you unfamiliar with his name, is a noted skeevy British playboy who has won The Sun's Shagger of the Year Award three years running. Way to go, Russell, you skank. He's also currently starring in the movie Get Him to the Greek, which just looks.....oh, never mind how it looks. If I just came right out and said it, my mother would shoot me and embalm my body in Clorox. He is reportedly engaged to the American pop-tart Katy Perry, famous for the song titled "I Kissed a Girl," and their union might just cause the apocalypse to rain down upon us. That's Russell Brand's picture up there, by the way, and yes, he always looks that crazed and glassy of eye. That Katy is one brave girl.

Only the fact that Alfred Molina is also in the cast of this movie keeps me from utter despair. But I have to admit, I'm piqued. JULIE TRAYMOR, I HATE YOU FOR SUCKING ME INTO THIS VORTEX! I shall wait for the fall, nibbling on my fingernails and waiting for the storm to break.

Rounding third, as you like it

I had to throw in a baseball metaphor there because our house, which is frequently All About Shakespeare is now also All About the Cincinnati Reds, my husband's favorite baseball team, along with whoever else beats the Yankees.

Anyhoo, we're almost finished with this semester's Shakespeare Workshop and I'm a little sad. I have really loved this play, in spite of the two DVD versions we've had to watch. There to the right, you can see the text copy of the play we're using from SparkNotes No Fear Shakespeare collection, along with the Cliff notes, which I am teaching the students to use in the proper manner, which means using them as a supplement to clarify what you're reading, not declining to read the actual assigned work, but rather doing the quick skim with the help of your good buddy, Cliff, the night before the quiz and then cringing in embarrassment when the professor hands back your paper with a scowl.

You can also see my little sprawl of DVDs and the huge pile of handouts I prepared for the class. My students just LOVE those. LOVE them.

We watched the BBC version (released in the United States by Ambrose Video) first and I'm sorry say that the whole class has finally reached the point where we all sit and openly mock this production. Poor Helen Mirren. She was just wasted in this piece of poo, and by "wasted" I do not mean that the poor girl was out of her senses with drink, although WHO COULD HAVE BLAMED HER? I myself thought I was going to have to fill an innocent water bottle with gin to drag my protesting senses through that last forty minutes, and all I had to do was watch the thing, not participate in it. It was rough, my friends.

The lowest point came when the actor playing Hymen came out to bless the happy couples, leading Celia and Rosalind by the hands, all three of them dressed in white. The two girls, of course, were arrayed in their wedding finery, complete with wreaths of flowers and gauzy trailing hippie peasant outfits and the only three things kept it from looking like that summer rock-n-roll party out on Mr. Yasgur's farm in 1969: 1) the lack of mud; 2) the lack of Jimi Hendrix; and 3) the lack of hallucinogens.

Hymen was wearing a bare-chested ensemble and was just....oh, help me. He just looked so weird, weird enough that some of the younger members of the class burst into laughter, covering their mouths with their hands and looking at each other in horrified delight. I tried to tell myself that he probably looked just fine back in 1978, but then I gave it up and called myself a liar. Off to confession with me! It was weird.

Shortly after that, the entire cast joined hands and began to do a festive little country dance, around and around in a shady glen. I began to think differently about the hallucinogens. The dance was shot straight-on from one camera angle so that the audience was treated to the visual of everyone's back and bottoms dancing by, dancing, dancing. Several members of the class laid their heads down on the table and howled. It was ludicrous.

The high point, though, was the two little boys singing "It was a lover and his lass" to Touchstone in the wide open field. The melody was so sweet and their soprano voices were so pure, it brought tears to my eyes, and honestly, watching that whole hot mess was worth it, just hearing that song. I tried to find it on YouTube for you all to hear, but either it's not there or I'm not searching correctly, but here, at least, are the lyrics.

It was a lover and his lass
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no,
That o'er the green cornfield did pass
In springtime, in springtime, the only pretty ring time
When birds do sing hey ding-a-ding-a-ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring

Between the acres of the rye
With a hey and a ho and a hey-nonny-no,
These pretty country folks would lie
In springtime, in springtime, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding-a-ding-a-ding,
Sweet lovers love the spring.

This carol they began that hour,
With a hey and a ho and a hey-nonny-no,
How that a life was but a flower
In springtime, in springtime, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding-a-ding-a-ding
Sweet lovers love the spring

And therefore take the present time
With a hey and a ho and a hey-nonny-no
For love is crownéd with the prime
In springtime, in springtime, the only pretty ring time
When birds do sing hey ding-a-ding-a-ding
Sweet lovers love the spring

The Twentieth Century Fox production with Elisabeth Bergner and Laurence Olivier had actually pulled ahead of the BBC version, but we all marked them down severely for truncating the script to such an extent, the movie was wrapped up and running credits a mere fifteen minutes after the climax scene of Rosalind receiving the bloody handkerchief from Oliver. Honestly, the pace galloped on at such a breakneck speed, we all felt slightly stunned. At one moment, Rosalind-as-Ganymede was fainting dead away on the floor of the Forest of Arden and the next moment, she was apparently giving herself a brisk brushing-off so that she could put on a white gown and come in with Celia, leading a diaper-dressed infant Hymen with fake wings attached to his chubby back. Huh? Whose kid was that? Some cast or crew member's, maybe?

That production ended with the entire cast waving maniacally along with a crowd of extras and it swept us along so quickly, I can't remember if anything was ever said about Duke Frederick's conversion and Jaques' decision to go join him or not. Elisabeth Bergner did her Epilogue in a coy, squeaky manner that made me want to pinch her, and since she kept shifting, courtesy of the Magic of the Cinema, back and forth between Ganymede and Rosalind, it seemed kind of schizophrenic. Or maybe it indicated that Orlando and Phoebe were both in for a treat, because Rosalind had decided to start batting for both teams, if you know what I mean. Whatever.

I'm glad to be done with both of them, and very shortly here, I'm going to retire to my living room and watch Kenneth Branagh's version from start to finish. Hopefully, I will be so wowed that I'll run right back in here and post a raving review. So keep your good eye on this if you're interested, my dears.

Without the dumb hats, as you like it

Honestly, when my students and I first started watching and critiquing this production, I didn't think I'd be able to slog my way through it. I mean, LOOK AT THOSE HATS. Seriously. I'm not certain if those hats have ever existed for women's wear outside the confines of the princess dress-up box the girls used to have in their playroom. I find them horrifying, although I've kind of become accustomed to the fact that Laurence Olivier? Big fan of the tights, he was. BIG fan.

Anyway, it got off to a bit of a slow start. But now that all the major characters have been kicked out of their homes and banished to the Forest of Arden, things have picked up a lot. I actually found myself smiling yesterday over some fun sight gags, including Elizabeth Bergner (pointy hat on the right) as Rosalind as Ganymede -- phew! -- repeatedly poking and bonking Laurence-as-Orlando about the head and neck with one of his rolled up poems.

As the kids and I discussed later, sometimes you can get a pleasant surprise. A book, a movie, a play that is a slow-starter can all of a sudden develop a bit of a shine. I'm glad to say that this production, which was directed by Paul Czinner and released in 1937 by Twentieth Century Fox studios, has done just that. And that's saying something, since I'm a purist who generally disapproves of Shakespeare's scripts being hacked and chopped with a heavy hand: this should-be-about-150-minute play was reduced to something like ninety-five minutes. That's a lot of cutting!

Not so much for the BBC version. It was made for television, which should sound a dire warning knell in your head. It sure did in mine, "made-for-TV" being synonymous with "crummy production values and wooden acting on an extremely limited budget." This version of As You Like It, released several years ago by Ambrose Video as part of a VERY EXPENSIVE SET of Shakespearean comedies, is just....the pits. I don't know how else to describe it. It was directed by Basil Coleman and released in Great Britain in 1978 and it's just a sad, lackluster little production. Even lovely Helen Mirren can't do much to save it, although the actor playing Corin (David Lloyd Meredith) had a little oomph to him. And Angharad Rees as Celia is just a cutie pie, although I don't think that she and Helen Mirren were given nearly enough of a chance to express their girlish goofy fun.

For the first time yesterday, Orlando (Brian Stirner) finally cracked a smile and gave poor Helen something to actually work with. Up until that point, he's gone around either with an expressionless face or with a furrowed brow. I keep looking for some spark of life in the man, since he's playing such a dashing hero, but what I keep getting is that he really has to poop and is inwardly wondering how long it will be before the director calls out, "Cut!!! Everybody take five!"

All this makes me hungry for two things:

1) Watching the Kenneth Branagh version of As You Like It in two weeks with the class, and;

2) Going to Stratford and seeing the play performed live onstage at the Festival Theater...I can hardly wait. No matter how good a filmed production is, the energy of live theater is a whole different animal. Plus, we have, like, the MOST AWESOME seats for the performance. And, heaven be thanked, it is not a freaking student matinee, so that what's going on onstage is completely eclipsed by what's going on in the audience, with the cell phones and the constant talking and the wadding up pages from the playbill and lobbing them over the balcony every time the house lights go down. Never. Again. Ever.

Topsy-turvy, as you like it

Right there on that media cart in front of the very snazzy flat screen television are the three video productions of As You Like It my class is viewing during this Shakespeare Workshop.

The first is the version from 1937 starring Laurence Olivier as Orlando in his very first screen role and the beloved actress of worldwide reknown, Elisabeth Bergner, who plays the fair Rosalind. The second is the 1978 BBC made-for-TV production which stars the beauteous Helen Mirren as Rosalind and Angharad Rees as Celia and nobody else worth mentioning; the third is the 2006 Kenneth Branagh version with Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind, dear Brian Blessed as both Duke Senior and Duke Frederick, and that adorable Romola Garai, who played Emma in the Masterpiece Theater version of the same just this past winter, as Celia.

At the present moment, we're watching only the first two versions, with Branagh's version saved as a treat to watch straight through in week seven of the eight week workshop. And I have to say, those first two versions are some hard going. As it turns out, the majority of the class, include ME, the teacher who roped these kids into this thing, thinks that both are complete crap.

I was standing at the back of the class watching the Olivier/Bergner version yesterday and thinking that I could be better entertained by closely observing a stick of butter. And just don't get me started on that made-for-TV version. The BBC filmed a whole slew of Shakespeare's plays for the edumacation of British schoolchildren -- those movies were meant to be the definitive work of Shakespeare for an entire generation of young minds, and they star quite a few heavyweights from British stage and screen. There are four complete sets of these movies that have been released upon -- excuse me, for -- the general public and they're titled "The Works of William Shakespeare," but I think their subtitle should be "An Earnest Attempt to Make Students Hate Him and His Dumb Plays."

That would include this As You Like It, in which the actor playing Orlando looks like a girl and the costumes hail from the medieval period of history instead of the Renaissance era, a glaring error even a piker like me can recognize and feature these ridiculous horned headdresses for the women -- THANK HEAVEN they get to escape to the Forest of Arden and ditch those things -- and whoops!!! There you did it! You went and let me get started.

I haven't seen the Branagh version yet because I was saving it as a treat for myself for slogging through these other two versions -- I can only hope that it is better than his Henry V and as good as or better than his Hamlet -- but if it turns out to be as bad as the other two, I may have a riot on my hands.

I'm greatly looking forward to seeing how the director of As You Like It at the Stratford Festival will handle things this September. It couldn't be any worse than what we have going on right now.

Another Hamlet!!!

Suffering from great walloping amounts of big spitty excitement today because today at Shakespeare, my friend Dwan (no, not DAWN, it's DWAN) told me that the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet with David Tennant as the tormented prince and Patrick Stewart as Claudius CAME OUT YESTERDAY ON DVD!!!

I am too excited and very, very glad that tomorrow is payday because I AM GOING TO OWN THIS VERSION, oh yes I am. Especially since this fall's Shakespeare Workshop has already been announced as -- you guessed it -- Hamlet.

I don't think I could ever have enough versions of this play: they're all really good, even the Hollywood version starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. A lot of people pan that version because so much script-cutting was done to pare the three-hour script down to a screenplay length suitable for the cinema instead of the stage, but Glenn Close is excellent as the guilty-as-sin Gertrude and Mel Gibson brings his Lethal Weapon twitchiness to his portrayal of Hamlet -- you keep expecting him to re-locate his dislocated shoulder on the dank wall of Elsinore Castle -- and I think the people who don't like it are just a bunch of ol' snobs.

But enough about Mel. David Tennant! David! Tennant! And PATRICK STEWART! I can hardly wait to get my hot little hands on that DVD.

Because sleeping is for sissies

My second-semester Shakespeare Workshop class on As You Like It begins tomorrow -- oh, wait, make that TODAY -- thankfully not until 1:00 p.m. Because? I am still sitting here at the computer, obviously, too wound up to sleep.

I have a goodly number of new students in the class this time, so I am all armed with handouts and notes for a little (*ahem*) speech I'd like to make to welcome them and get things started. Don't worry, kids. I promise to be done talking by around 5:00. Heh.

Will, you have been such a good friend to me. Teaching these classes is one of my greatest joys. I mean, other than chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts, which are just WRONG, they're so bad and probably not even real chocolate, let alone fudge and WHY ARE THEY SO GOOD??!!

Listen - you keep quiet about my strange and consuming passion for the Pop-Tarts and I won't tell anyone that art historians believe that that cool gold hoop earring was actually painted on the canvas long after the portrait was completed. It makes you look so savvy and swashbuckling and I kind of hate to burst people's bubbles.

Will's "Winter"

We're smack in the middle of a winter storm here in central Indiana, although it doesn't look as if it's nearly as bad as the weather forecasters predicted. You can't tell from the photo, but it's still snowing, and I thought this scene, which I can take a look at from my dining room window by turning my head slightly to the right, was the perfect twenty-first century illustration for Shakespeare's fifteenth century poem. Although I have an uncomfortable feeling that I know who's playing the role of greasy Joan in this scene. Humph.


Winter
from Love's Labor's Lost


When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

The play's the thing

The Shakespeare Workshop for the first semester is over, the class culminating in today's trip to Butler University's Lilly Theater for a student performance of The Merchant of Venice, directed by visiting artist in resident Tim Hardy of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

I thought the performance was just spectacular. I mean, I have been to a lot of student productions before and, well.....I've been to a lot of student productions. Let me just say that Tim Hardy is either a god among directors or the Butler Theater Department has been blessed with some remarkably talented young people, I don't know which. Probably both!

Lilly Hall Theater is just a little, itty-bitty place, a rectangular room with seats set up bleacher-style on either of the long sides. There were four sections comprised of twenty-two seats each, from the looks of it when the lights were on, so it was a very intimate setting.

At the far end was a two-story set piece that represented Shylock's house, complete with a balcony with a circular iron staircase, doors that REALLY WORKED (and if you've seen student productions before or more to the point if you've ever been in one, you know exactly what I mean) and a nice opaque window that featured realistic lamplight behind it. It was very effective. That was the only piece of the set that stayed in place throughout the play.

The rest of the "scenery" was presented in the form of stage props: two café tables and chairs to represent, well, an outdoor café; a desk with an old-fashioned radio and desk accoutrements to represent Portia's desk at Belmont; a table for Portia and Nerissa to sit at in the courtroom, and a very nice throne for the Duke of Venice to seat his royal personage upon.

The three casks - gold, silver and "base lead" - were also well done, which isn't often the case. Sometimes those things can look like Mom's old jewelry box touched up with a little spray paint, but these were quite nice. Believable.

I also really admired the lighting, which surpassed what I would have expected from such a small theater. It was put to very good effect, as was the audio: classical music "playing" on the old-fashioned radios, the sound of the surf on the beach and even a thunderstorm. Well done on both counts.

But it was the acting that was truly surprising. The young man who played Shylock (senior Jeff Irlbeck) was the undisputed star of the show. When he delivered the line "Let him see to his bond," his tone was so full of malice, a tingle went up my spine. He impressed me as a very gifted actor.

Junior Steph Gray, the actress who played the role of Portia, also did a very good job, as did junior Jill Harman, who played Nerissa. The two girls had a very happy chemistry between them, bringing out the BFF side of this mistress-and-maid relationship in a way that was very moving. I liked the way they looked out for one another, plotted with one another and giggled together. They were very cute.

One part of the production that didn't work for me as well was the chemistry between Bassanio (junior Peter Denz) and Portia. Denz took the role of the dashing Venezian lover, the impecunious young man who needed his older friend to float him a loan so that he could woo the fair lady of Belmont, and he was a bit of a disappointment. He was shorter than Portia, for one thing, although the girls in my class whom I spoke to after the play assured me that he was, like, ADORABLE. As an impulsive, swaggering young blade, I always expect Bassanio to be both sexy and way cool. It's hard to be sexy and way cool when you're looking at your lady-love's chin, know what I mean? But he wasn't a bad actor by any means. I thought he brought off his part very well.

The only part that fell flat for me was the ending. Some directors - sorry, Tim - just can't resist the unhappy ending, which...that's not what Shakespeare wrote.

At the end of The Merchant of Venice, the three couples (Jessica and Lorenzo, Nerissa and Gratiano, and Portia and Bassanio) all go off together with Antonio, teasing and laughing and bantering back and forth with each other. It's a very pleasant exeunt. But some directors - sorry again, Tim - have to let Lorenzo (senior Nate Burrsma) go off on his own, while Jessica (played by senior Audrey Bertaux-Skierik)sits and sobs over the letter informing her that she'll receive an inheritance from her father, Shylock, when he dies.

Why with the crying? Is she regretting that she eloped with Lorenzo and became a Christian? Is she sorry she stole her father's jewels and ducats and bought a monkey? Maybe the monkey bit her; I guess that could make you cry. Has Lorenzo taken to leaving open bags of potato chips in the living room and reeking socks on the bedroom floor after only three months of marriage? Although it seems more likely that she'd pinch him while he was sleeping than sit on a bench and sob.

I just don't get it. It really irritates to me and leads to a deflated feeling about the play, a sense of anticlimax. Here we all thought we were all going to be happy, joking around with each other about the men and their rings and those naughty girls, all dressed up like men and winning court cases and all, and maybe everyone piling into their cars and driving over to Denny's for a Grand Slam breakfast, but oh, wait....Who's that over there? Oh, it's Jessica. And she's holding that letter and, like, sobbing. Should we go ask her if she's okay? Where's Lorenzo? Does he know she's upset? Maybe we should all just stay here at Belmont and have cornflakes.

Bad ending. ANNOYING ending. But otherwise, a lovely afternoon in a cozy theater with friends.

A midsummer's night, with fairies

It is midsummer and midsummer always makes me think of Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night's Dream because I love the fairies, Peaseblossom, Mote, Cobweb and Mustardseed. I adore those sweet names.

Here's a lovely painting by the American artist John Anster Fitzgerald (1832-1906) of Titania and her little changeling with the attendant fairies.

And a fabulous Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) print of naughty Puck and a fairy dressed in rainbow colors.

Last of all, here's a magnificent photograph of actors Jack Corrigall as Oberon and Jon Miles as Puck from The Inn Theater Company's 2007 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Just spectacular costumes, I am awed. Great color and texture and wonderful stage makeup as well. Set against that rocky backdrop, they do look like creatures from another world. The Inn Theater Company performs in Dartmouth, England. If you'd like to have a look at their blog, which is hosted here at Blogger just give the link a little click and poooof!!! You'll be taken there by fairy magic!