There's magic in thy majesty

I'm starting this pretty late because cameron and i sat talking in the kitchen for awhile tonight about shows, hoof n horns, freshman and sophomore year, etc. it was cool. 

"So you have: but I was a gentleman born before my father; for the king's son took me by the hand, and called me brother; and then the two kings called my father brother; and then the prince my brother and the princess my sister called my father father; and so we wept, and there was the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed." -hahahaha

The Old Vic Theater started in Lambeth - aka the worst London slum int eh 19th century (when london was all industrially polluted and whatnot). It was a music hall, pretty much a gigantic pub, alcohol and entertainment. Pretty much that until after WWI and then it was taken over and turned into a theater. Yes, mom, Kevin Spacey took it over five years ago and hasbeen running it since. 

The Bridge Project, is a collaboration directed by Sam Mendes (wife: Kate Winslet), who directed BOTH The Cherry Orchard and The Winter's Tale. It is a cast of half British actors and half American actors. And for the most part it's done on the same set. They alternate which show they're doing every time they perform. Hence, we saw Cherry Orchard last night, and saw Winter's Tale tonight.  They spent half a year in NYC and are here in London for half a year and then they're going on tour with it. 

The Cherry Orchard

Time and the Conways which we saw forever ago, was actually influenced by Chekhov's Cherry Orchard --> a wealthy woman misuses money and destroys and entire family and loses their home.  A lower (mid class) guy becomes a rich guy. All characters regret their decisions but cant seem to do ANYTHING to change their ways and get out of their situation. 

So the beginning of cherry orchard starts in a nursery (winters tale too) - symbolic of how this people have never really actually grown up and characters wander in and out of the room with the action going on elsewhere in the house (also similar to time and the conways). for awhile, you cant even really tell who is the focus of the play, but you do know one thing: they are going to lose this house. So even though seemingly funny, happy, joyfl things are happening, we know something seriously ominous is approaching, ....so we get some poetic realism in a way. Checkhov really revolutionized that, the idea of making everything has realistic as possible through that 4th wall, so you feel like it's really happening, while having that poetic meaning behind it. realistic: people wander in and out of the rooms talking about different thigns so we dont know what's going on everywhere, no need for exposition really ("so tell me what happened in the last five years") and that seems more REAL.  poetic: sound imagery, beautiful alnguage, the meaning of the cherry orchard itself (loss of the old life, wealth, natural world), making the whole thing bittersweet, their world is coming to an end and no one is doing anything about it! partially do to their class, aristocratic limitation, they can't imagine anything else, or doing anything else. But chekhov still insists on slapstick comedy mixed in; just as Trofimov gets done yelling at Madam Ranevskaya, he falls down a flight of stairs. 

Chekhov actually trained as a doctor, but wasn't making enough money to support his family (yeah, different story today), so started writing plays, and also a lot of short stories, including lots of farces that were used as pre-shows for theater in the 19th century. in 1890 he took a year off and went to Siberia to see how tuberculosis was transmitted (eventually he got it, so probably not the best decision he could have made). and then came back to moscow and wrote some more full length plays.

The show itself....had its ups and downs. I think I liked it more than most of the kids here did, but that was just because I have a lot of respect for Chekhov, I mean, it's the Cherry Orchard. But we all agreed all the American actors were relatively weak in comparison to Sinead Cusack (Ranevskaya, awesome) and Simon Russell Beale (Lopakhin, the ultimate source that destroys the very world and family he worshipped and idealized when he was outside of it). Rebecca Hall [cough..] was good too (though I liked her much better...tongiht) 

One thing that frustrated everyone was that we couldn't really see a cohesiveness within the family. and truthfully, that could possibly be the most important thing that they could have. Though Time and the Conways had its faults too, those actors up there together seemed like they had spent their whole lives together. they were perfectly merged, and balanced each other, and together...made a family. these guys...sorta just seemed like they stepped into the spotlight when their line came up and otherwise had ntohing to do with what was going on. I also think either Ethan Hawke was super sick and completely hoarse, or his voice was just terrible. He go from talking to screaming between two words alone and it was miserable. Shoutouts, however, to Firs (Richard Easton) who was the completely hilarious manservant. every line he said was just spot on. :) and one cameo part done by Yepikhodov (Tobias Segal), he was trying to woo this girl and was trying to seductively sit down on some pillows and fell and ended up doing a backwards somersault until he was standing up again and tried to play it off like he had just walked two feet and not fallen over. it was funny. 

Other than that, definitely not one of my favorites, though kyle and i did agree it was still better than the observer. haha. 

The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale was written pretty late in Shakespeare's career, which means the language is more complex and it's also called a "romance" - neither totally tragic or totally comic. 

-The king is jealous over his wife, leads to the death of his son (and he thinks wife and daughter). the resolution is different from a tragedy or a comedy, so hard to say where it fits in. 

but there is a commonality between all the romances:

-somewhere in it before or during the play, there is a dissolution of a family that is resolved in the end.

-somewhere in the play the focus goes onto the daughter and her future.

-often have supernatural effects: the gods intervene in one part of the play, tend to take place in a pagan world, too. 

-but there is always sort of a Christian idea of order, - a design to life, mercy, atonement, purpose, etc.

couple changes occurred within the time before and during the writing and production fo this play

-1608 the kings men bought an indoor theater in addition to the globe (I saw a really old drawing of what it really looked like yesterday!!!), so they could run year round. the theater was much smaller (held 800, as opposed to 2000), and were built like public halls, or galleries, seats all around and music on a gallery above. only aristocrats went, no groundlings (which is funny because Ethan Hawke as Autolycus the rogue says at one point to the audience something like, "aren't we glad we weren't born stupid like these men??" haha)

within winter's tale itself, we have 2 countries (excep ttheres no connection to them, politically or socially or anything, they both might as well be england, hahah), Sicilia and Bohemia. We move out into the countryside of Bohemia at one point and theyre having a sheep sheering festival (do what??? isnt that the English countryside?? haha). 

-we start at the Sicilian court, King (Simon Russell Beale) goes crazy jealous when he thinks his wife, the Queen Hermione (Rebecca Hall), is having an affair with Polixenes (Josh Hamilton) because he's been visitng for nine months and she's preggo. (Oh boy)she's innocent, but he throws her in jail, and goes crazy insane jealous even though everyone is trying to convince him it's not true. 

-Weird part? he becomes insanely jealous out of nowhere! literally, just at the beginning he does! so how do you make this believable to an audience who thinks people make rational decisions??? ----make the king short and fat (poor simon) and make the queen and Polixenes very attractive (check). haha. thus, king jealous, based in his own inadequacy (he thinks). , they also did this really cool motion thing during hte part where he gets jealous and we see the queen and polixenes thru his eyes, and they start cuddling and palying with each others' fingers with all this dark dream-like lighting and then it jumps right back into the scene and it's like they were never there at all! it was so cool!

-the oracle says she's innocent and bad things are gonna happen, but he says it lies. next thing he knows, his son is dead. wife has a baby daughter and king tells this guy to destroy it, but the guy cant so he sets it on top of a hill and then the guy gets eaten by a bear! it was CRAZY. A BEAR came onstage. okay it was a guy dressed up uber realistically. i screamed. i was so scared. it was soooo real and came up behind him! ahhhh it was awesome! then the king is told his wife and daughter are dead too and he's like "dang it...that was dumb" 

-but then we go with the daughter for awhile. and she actually gets picked up by a shepherd and his son and they raise her into this beautiful thingamajig and she falls in love (16years later) with teh Prince of Bohemia who chills with them but cant do anything because he's royalty so he decides to marry her without telling his father the king (polixenes). Theyre at this festival and they all do this really funny dance with balloons, i don't think i'll forget. ;)

turns out King Polixenes knows his son is there and gets all angry that he tries to marry a peasant. They run off to Sicily to try to fix things, the king has repented, and goes offstage with this girl....who looks like his wife... adn then shakespeare does something interesting. he has OTHER people come onstage and be like 'Omg the king and his daughter are reunited.' 'oh he cry and they are so happy.' but it doesnt happen onstage, we hear it like a newscast. why?? because the wife isn't actually dead! and shakespeare wanted the big climax moment to be when THEY are reunited!

King has pretty much been living like a monk to repent and Paulina says, we've had this statute made of your wife, come see. and they go look at her and she's beeeeauuuutiful. but sixteen years older and king's like why and paulina (sinead cusack) says "we wanted to show her as she would have lived now" and king gets so sad and wants to kiss her and paulina says okay, i can make this stone move and she does! hooray. lots of crying (i cried for heaven's sake!) they embrace it's intense. powerful. awesome.

BUT. complications:

-Hermione never speaks to her husband the rest of the paly. she embraces him but has no lines to him. A lot of people have said this indicates that she doesnt actually reconcile with her husbadn (AHA!), but CLum thinsk it's more that she's completely speechless with emotion. overwhelmed that finally she can be with her king again, not to meniton see her 16year old daughter she thinks is dead.

-Camillo and Paulina get married and there are no lines between them! and they don't really know each other. random.

-In this play, there's a lot of focus on that Order i mentioned earlier. and the idea that giving into your worst impulses can make you a slave to fortune, which will do bad things to you. and the only way to avoid that is to keep yoruslef in mind of that divine order. nothing is coincidence, but part of that larger order. 

-we can also see that in all the nature-y stuff in the show. hen Antigonus gets eaten by that BEAR. Son dies because a thundercloud (storm) came. nature isnt necessarily independent of our actions, but can really punish us. 

I also learned in class today that from 1660-18th shakespeare's plays were often performed in rewritten versions. King Lear didn't die, but got married in the end. The Nurse was taken out of Romeo and Juliet because R&J is a tragedy and the nurse was too comic, verse was regularized. winter's tale was hardly done at all!; in the late 18th and 19th century scenery got more popular and shakespeare plays like midsummer nights dream got super popular because they could have these gorgeous sets. 1864, they started doing shows at stratford-upon-avon; it was the 300th anniversary of shakespeare (dunno what...birth? haha). and then began producing a lot, but still Winter's Tale didnt get popular until a little over fifty years ago. today it's done a lot. and as of tonight, I can honestly say it's one of my new favorite shakespeares. I loved it. the plot was simple and beautiful. just the story of a break down of a family because of one man's BAD decision and how it is resolved. I loved it. 

Not to mention, the lighting was BeautifuL! tons of candles in the back! and I'd give anything to put on any of the ladies' dresses. SO PRETTY!!!!! all of them! i was so jealous. such pretty colors. 

i like when shakespeare is done with a twist. theyre supposed to be contemporary plays anyway. do them that way. tongiht was awesome. 

4:48 Psychosis.

just a couple more things on it from discussion

-the show was exactly 1 hour and 12 mins. it is literally the thoughts that ran through this woman's mind from the time she woke up every morning until the time she got up 4;48 am to 6 am. CRAZYYY. We decided a lot of her small movements (and also lack of movements) were due to her insomnia. There are actually at least five characters, her, her boyfriend (who leaves her), two doctors, and a woman who doesn't exist. This production had her do all the lines as if she is thinking about all them in her head, conversations, memories, or perhaps as they are occurring, hard to tell. the last time Clum saw it, there were three people in the play. I wander if it would have been more exciting to watch with three people....

Clum also said theres a lot more humor it in that they completely cut out of this production which kinda sucks. Apparently records of what Sarah Kane was like before she killed herself, though incredibly depressed, she really was quite funny (weird...) anyway, it definitely makes you think about who you are and where you are and it's still completely unsettling. but makes you think...isnt that what plays should do anyway? 

Streetcar Named Desire tomorrow. SO excited.

night

much love,

becca

p.s. random: found out that next year at the National, Paul Ready and Michelle Terry (my buddies from Time and the Conways and All's Well that Ends Well) are going to be doing the first play that was every done in a 3D box set (done in 1841). before that there was really only a backdrop adn a person and no spacial relation between people and the set. I also heard a random anecdote that the first time a door was opened on stage, the audience applauded, not because of the actor, but because of the door! teehee. :)