3/21/06 Reactions to Blackfriars "Tis Pity" and "R & J"
NOTE: entry written(from notes) March 21)
PLAY: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
DAY/DATE/CURTAIN: Sat, Feb. 24, 2006
COMPANY: SSE (now American Shakespeare Center)
DIRECTOR: company (Actors’ Renaissance Season)
VENUE: Blackfriars Playhouse
HOUSE SIZE & TYPE: modern reconstruction of Jacobean playhouse; modified thrust with galleries; 10 seats on stage; intimate (capacity?)
Notes taken at the time:
(sitting on stage before performance begins) Theatre is beautiful. Much more impressive than I expected. Feels larger, more substantial, more professional (more “respectable”?): there’s real money here. Interestijng how that conveys respectability--even to me. Bun not just bomey: good taste, too, in all the wood, the chandeliers, the heavy raw beams supporting the galleries, the painted fascia (?). Beautiful wood everywhere.
(reactions after performance)
* All the songs (and staging of songs) terrific! Hip, funny, musically polished, fun.
* “Spelling Bee” announcement was a hilarious and clever way of combining housekeeping (intervals, cellphones, exits, snack bar, snack bar, snack bar) with audience warm-up. Actress in little girl costume stood in center of stage while offstage voice announced spelling bee, gave her words to spell, interrupted & bullied her. Still, I wonder if you could do more to get the audience rowdy. Hilarious but not direct interaction w/audience.
Mixed reaction to play itself. Thought the mix of periods in costuming worked well (actors basically made their own costume choices; choice to mix periods evolved naturally). Staging was ok but I would have liked more interaction w/ audience (use of props?).
Tempo: moved very well and didn’t seem rushed (how much cut?).
Text: handled pretty well by all. Some actors clearer than others but all very much in command of text.
Acting: comic characters (Bergetto & Poggio) worked very well--and death of Bergetto paid off VERY well (shocking and poignant). Richardetto (Doctor) plalyed as comic character, mad scientist type, which was too jokey for me though actor did well. Quite impressed by Friar/Donado: strong actor. Soranzo played quite sympathetically--very much Othello to Vasques’ Iago (am I being racist? Soranzo played by only black actor). Seems like something more interesting could be done with the character.
Biggest disappointment was with actors playing the brother/sister/lovers, Giovanni & Annabella: Both good-looking but not much there. NO LUST! Their scenes should have been hot but they weren’t (Hippolita, now she was sexy!). Giovanni seemed especially weak as an actor. (Couldn’t he have at least opened his shirt when asking her to kill him? Would have started something.
Choices: Well, no director--and, while I really like the idea as an experiment, I think it showed. I kept waiting for more intelligent, bolder, and more coherent choices. Mining the humor is fine, but many of the choices were too jokey for me (Doctor, reacting to Cardinal’s injustice indicated comic frustration in a gaggy way--as far as I can recall). I’m not sure what I would do with this play--in many ways, the production brought out more than I got from my cursory re-reading--but I think it should be disturbing, excessive, grotesque (Giovanni could be eerily, quietly crazed in final scene).
BUT: My favorite scene was Hippolita’s masque and subsequent death. Very stylized, strange, sexy--made me think whole play could work as movement piece, non-naturalistic (why is default acting choice w/ renaissance plays always naturalism? There again, masque itself was “extra-textual” (like songs except directly called for in text)--company shines in that department (but the staging of her death, which includes dialogue, was great in same way).
Another bold choice: Giovanni stabbed Annabella in her cunt/womb. Strange, disturbing, a bit hard to see. With better actors it might have been a really stunning choice.
This theatre is amazing. I sat on the stage (s.l. side) for most of performance, though I was in gallery above s.r. for Act 2.
============================
NOTE: entry (from notes) written March 21)
PLAY: Romeo and Juliet
DAY/DATE/CURTAIN: 2:00 pm Sun, Feb. 25, ‘06
COMPANY: SSE (now American Shakespeare Center)
DIRECTOR: company (Actors’ Renaissance Season)
VENUE: Blackfriars Playhouse
HOUSE SIZE & TYPE: modern reconstruction of Jacobean playhouse; modified thrust with galleries; 10 seats on stage; intimate (capacity?)
(sitting on stage before performance) I would love to perform in this space with a full house (especially in the upper galleries). In the right circumstances, the architecture should give a sense of the crowd as a crowd, a feeling of volitility (as I thought possible at CRASS all those years ago). I wonder if the very beauty and institutional feeling of this very nice theatre makes that kind of volitile crowd scenes impossible.
Quick thoughts right after performance: I enjoyed this production much more than I expected (worried about actors playing Giovanni & Annabella appearing again as Romeo & Juliet, though the choice makes perfect sense as a way of underlining the similarities between the two plays).
Funny: As I moved around at the intervals (onstage to front row to rear gallery) my sense of involvement changed to the point that I was bored in the gallery. I moved back to the stage for the last act and my interest picked up again (also due to construction of play).
One disappointment: the songs and pre-show business not nearly as entertaining as in last night’s performance. Good, but a bit more ho-hum. Or it was just me. However, I got a big kick out of the actor playing the Prince doing the Prince song, “My Name is Prince” backed up by whole cast. Well-done and funny.
I thought the actors playing R and J did a much better job (solid, though not extraordinary). Interesting. How much had to do with their and our familiarity--to say the least--with the script. They seemed more able to commit, to make bolder choices. Hard to say about the other actors. Mercutio was big, as he should be, but not really surprising--his “Queen Mab” speech was good, not great, and his play with Romeo and Nurse good and dirty. His acting seemed to advertise itself.
One relatively small choice near the end threatened to ruin the whole performance for me: The Romeo-Apothacary scene was played very gaggy (by Apoth.): he was a crazed madman behind the barred window in the u.l. door; the poison was an ordinary tea bag (which Romeo featured as he left--is there something in the text about an “infusion”? Don’t care--bad choice). Finally, the Apoth. raised a claw a la Freddy Kruger. Really almost did in the whole play for me, as if the actors were saying, “Why are we doing this stupid, overdone cliche of a play?” Why didn’t Jim kill that idea. Weakness of actor-directed production.
Did the actors do a better job with R & J than with ‘Tis Pity? Wis I more involved after talking to jim? Was the familiarity of the script comforting? Is it simply a much better-written play than ‘Tis Pity? Don’t know.
Much later thoughts about the questions poised above: I was dreading R & J a bit and actually enjoyed it (I’ve seen this play ‘way too much). I’d like to know (from the actors) how different the experience of being provided only with “sides” was in working on the two plays. Obviously, even if no one read the whole play before rehearsals, R & J is much more in our heads than ‘Tis Pity. So maybe the actors really felt much more secure. Of course that familiarity led to the awful Apothocary choice. On the other hand, I think that they probably didn’t quite know what to do with the whole grotesque revenge tragedy aspect of Tis Pity, so they wen’t more readily to humor and the result was that the play seemed much thinner than R & J. So: What does all this say about the need for a director? Is a director’s job to realize a “vision” of the play, to guide the actors and designers toward a mostly premeditated idea? Or is it to guide everyone on an adventure in which no one really knows the destination? In which case, shouldn’t creative actors be able to guide themselves?
Finally: Although I don’t think that this company’s work usually fulfills the promise of it’s attempt to use original practices to free the audience from the kind of bourgeois decorum imposed by a proscenium, darkened house, I’m re-inspired by their attempts to create a live, immediate event using renaissance texts and practices combined with contemporary sensibilites (especially musical). They’re actually trying to do something (and sustain a large business at the same time) rather than just market the same old same old Shakespeare. They take some chances. Good for them!
PLAY: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
DAY/DATE/CURTAIN: Sat, Feb. 24, 2006
COMPANY: SSE (now American Shakespeare Center)
DIRECTOR: company (Actors’ Renaissance Season)
VENUE: Blackfriars Playhouse
HOUSE SIZE & TYPE: modern reconstruction of Jacobean playhouse; modified thrust with galleries; 10 seats on stage; intimate (capacity?)
Notes taken at the time:
(sitting on stage before performance begins) Theatre is beautiful. Much more impressive than I expected. Feels larger, more substantial, more professional (more “respectable”?): there’s real money here. Interestijng how that conveys respectability--even to me. Bun not just bomey: good taste, too, in all the wood, the chandeliers, the heavy raw beams supporting the galleries, the painted fascia (?). Beautiful wood everywhere.
(reactions after performance)
* All the songs (and staging of songs) terrific! Hip, funny, musically polished, fun.
* “Spelling Bee” announcement was a hilarious and clever way of combining housekeeping (intervals, cellphones, exits, snack bar, snack bar, snack bar) with audience warm-up. Actress in little girl costume stood in center of stage while offstage voice announced spelling bee, gave her words to spell, interrupted & bullied her. Still, I wonder if you could do more to get the audience rowdy. Hilarious but not direct interaction w/audience.
Mixed reaction to play itself. Thought the mix of periods in costuming worked well (actors basically made their own costume choices; choice to mix periods evolved naturally). Staging was ok but I would have liked more interaction w/ audience (use of props?).
Tempo: moved very well and didn’t seem rushed (how much cut?).
Text: handled pretty well by all. Some actors clearer than others but all very much in command of text.
Acting: comic characters (Bergetto & Poggio) worked very well--and death of Bergetto paid off VERY well (shocking and poignant). Richardetto (Doctor) plalyed as comic character, mad scientist type, which was too jokey for me though actor did well. Quite impressed by Friar/Donado: strong actor. Soranzo played quite sympathetically--very much Othello to Vasques’ Iago (am I being racist? Soranzo played by only black actor). Seems like something more interesting could be done with the character.
Biggest disappointment was with actors playing the brother/sister/lovers, Giovanni & Annabella: Both good-looking but not much there. NO LUST! Their scenes should have been hot but they weren’t (Hippolita, now she was sexy!). Giovanni seemed especially weak as an actor. (Couldn’t he have at least opened his shirt when asking her to kill him? Would have started something.
Choices: Well, no director--and, while I really like the idea as an experiment, I think it showed. I kept waiting for more intelligent, bolder, and more coherent choices. Mining the humor is fine, but many of the choices were too jokey for me (Doctor, reacting to Cardinal’s injustice indicated comic frustration in a gaggy way--as far as I can recall). I’m not sure what I would do with this play--in many ways, the production brought out more than I got from my cursory re-reading--but I think it should be disturbing, excessive, grotesque (Giovanni could be eerily, quietly crazed in final scene).
BUT: My favorite scene was Hippolita’s masque and subsequent death. Very stylized, strange, sexy--made me think whole play could work as movement piece, non-naturalistic (why is default acting choice w/ renaissance plays always naturalism? There again, masque itself was “extra-textual” (like songs except directly called for in text)--company shines in that department (but the staging of her death, which includes dialogue, was great in same way).
Another bold choice: Giovanni stabbed Annabella in her cunt/womb. Strange, disturbing, a bit hard to see. With better actors it might have been a really stunning choice.
This theatre is amazing. I sat on the stage (s.l. side) for most of performance, though I was in gallery above s.r. for Act 2.
============================
NOTE: entry (from notes) written March 21)
PLAY: Romeo and Juliet
DAY/DATE/CURTAIN: 2:00 pm Sun, Feb. 25, ‘06
COMPANY: SSE (now American Shakespeare Center)
DIRECTOR: company (Actors’ Renaissance Season)
VENUE: Blackfriars Playhouse
HOUSE SIZE & TYPE: modern reconstruction of Jacobean playhouse; modified thrust with galleries; 10 seats on stage; intimate (capacity?)
(sitting on stage before performance) I would love to perform in this space with a full house (especially in the upper galleries). In the right circumstances, the architecture should give a sense of the crowd as a crowd, a feeling of volitility (as I thought possible at CRASS all those years ago). I wonder if the very beauty and institutional feeling of this very nice theatre makes that kind of volitile crowd scenes impossible.
Quick thoughts right after performance: I enjoyed this production much more than I expected (worried about actors playing Giovanni & Annabella appearing again as Romeo & Juliet, though the choice makes perfect sense as a way of underlining the similarities between the two plays).
Funny: As I moved around at the intervals (onstage to front row to rear gallery) my sense of involvement changed to the point that I was bored in the gallery. I moved back to the stage for the last act and my interest picked up again (also due to construction of play).
One disappointment: the songs and pre-show business not nearly as entertaining as in last night’s performance. Good, but a bit more ho-hum. Or it was just me. However, I got a big kick out of the actor playing the Prince doing the Prince song, “My Name is Prince” backed up by whole cast. Well-done and funny.
I thought the actors playing R and J did a much better job (solid, though not extraordinary). Interesting. How much had to do with their and our familiarity--to say the least--with the script. They seemed more able to commit, to make bolder choices. Hard to say about the other actors. Mercutio was big, as he should be, but not really surprising--his “Queen Mab” speech was good, not great, and his play with Romeo and Nurse good and dirty. His acting seemed to advertise itself.
One relatively small choice near the end threatened to ruin the whole performance for me: The Romeo-Apothacary scene was played very gaggy (by Apoth.): he was a crazed madman behind the barred window in the u.l. door; the poison was an ordinary tea bag (which Romeo featured as he left--is there something in the text about an “infusion”? Don’t care--bad choice). Finally, the Apoth. raised a claw a la Freddy Kruger. Really almost did in the whole play for me, as if the actors were saying, “Why are we doing this stupid, overdone cliche of a play?” Why didn’t Jim kill that idea. Weakness of actor-directed production.
Did the actors do a better job with R & J than with ‘Tis Pity? Wis I more involved after talking to jim? Was the familiarity of the script comforting? Is it simply a much better-written play than ‘Tis Pity? Don’t know.
Much later thoughts about the questions poised above: I was dreading R & J a bit and actually enjoyed it (I’ve seen this play ‘way too much). I’d like to know (from the actors) how different the experience of being provided only with “sides” was in working on the two plays. Obviously, even if no one read the whole play before rehearsals, R & J is much more in our heads than ‘Tis Pity. So maybe the actors really felt much more secure. Of course that familiarity led to the awful Apothocary choice. On the other hand, I think that they probably didn’t quite know what to do with the whole grotesque revenge tragedy aspect of Tis Pity, so they wen’t more readily to humor and the result was that the play seemed much thinner than R & J. So: What does all this say about the need for a director? Is a director’s job to realize a “vision” of the play, to guide the actors and designers toward a mostly premeditated idea? Or is it to guide everyone on an adventure in which no one really knows the destination? In which case, shouldn’t creative actors be able to guide themselves?
Finally: Although I don’t think that this company’s work usually fulfills the promise of it’s attempt to use original practices to free the audience from the kind of bourgeois decorum imposed by a proscenium, darkened house, I’m re-inspired by their attempts to create a live, immediate event using renaissance texts and practices combined with contemporary sensibilites (especially musical). They’re actually trying to do something (and sustain a large business at the same time) rather than just market the same old same old Shakespeare. They take some chances. Good for them!
posted by Graham at 1:43 PM
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