Cymbeline: The Chronicles of Awesome.

Barrow Street Theatre - NYC

December 18, 2011

Brad - A

Chelsea - A

The Eye-Talians!

After awaking from a nice 3 hour nap --- also known as Richard II --- Chelsea and I headed back to Greenwich village for play 4 of 4 on the weekend. After circling the same block 3 times (sad but true), we stopped in for some delicious Bleecker Street Pizza. The pizza confused Chelsea; I am not sure why.

So, Cymbeline started at 7:30 PM on Sunday night. We were exhausted, but the wait was well worth it.

In this play, Imogen, King Cymbeline's daughter, and Posthumus get married secretly. Because Posthumus is not royalty, the King banishes him to Italy. Instead, the King tries to set up Imogen with her step-brother. While in Italy (pronounced IT-lee), Posthumus bets Iachimo, a dirty Italian, that he could never seduce Imogen. Long story short, Iachimo fails to seduce Imogen, but he sneaks into her room while she is asleep and ... umm ... gathers sufficient intimate information to convince Posthumus that he indeed succeeded with her. Under the influence of this lie, Posthumus sends a letter to Imogen asking her to meet him at a remote village in England; he also sends a letter to his close friend, Imogen's servant, instructing him to kill her at said remote village. The servant takes her to the village, tells her about the letter, and then leaves her. She immediately cross dresses and pledges to travel to Italy to find Posthumus. Along the way she wanders into a cave --- again, dressed as a man --- and finds a woods-woman and her two sons. Still dressed like a man, Imogen joins the ranks of the Roman army on its way to invade England because the King refused to pay Rome its rent. Battle ensues, the woods-people save the day, Imogen and Posthumus are reunited, and Iachimo admits he lied. The King allows Imogen and Posthumus to marry and those woods-people end up being the King's long lost sons. It's kinda like the ending of a very long Scooby Doo episode.

Crazy, I know. But this production was amazing. The entire cast consisted of six actors. All of the actors, except for Imogen, played multiple roles. But it was done so well, there was no confusion. In fact, in the last scene, the same actor had to play multiple roles in the same scene. It was hilarious to see characters that conflicted with each other played by the same actor. It sounds cheesy, but the cast pulled it off seamlessly. Also, the play was filled with fantastic music. It was folksy, blue-grass hipster music --- think Avett Brothers in skinny jeans. Each actor had a great voice. Every choice this cast/director made worked. It was a great end to the weekend of Shakespeare.

This video gives you a taste of the music and minimalist nature of this production.  Check out the music at about the 1:15 mark. Awesome.

The play ended. We took the train to the car. On our walk to the hotel we noticed this half-completed building was all lit up.

It took me a minute (because I am slow), but then I realized this is going to be the Freedom Tower --- the building built on the site of the Twin towers. Even half-completed, it promises to stand out in the cluttered Wall Street skyline.

We hopped in the car at 10:45, I dropped off Chelsea at 2:30, and I fell asleep at 3:00. I was at work the next morning right on time -- an improbable, but successful weekend trip. After one month, we are now 6/37ths the way through the Shakespeare Cannon. The rest is downhill...

-- Brad-humus

Oh Ohio!

Lessons learns while returning to Ohio for Christmas:

Ohio-ans REALLY love to make their cars looks like holiday animals...

So embarrassing.

Richard II - The Chronicles of a Babyman

Pearl Theatre - NYC
December 18th, 2011


Brad - A
Chelsea - C

First of all, I'm sorry for the delay. This thing called Christmas happened and I was a bit busy celebrating the birth of the Lord. So, John M. you quit your sassing. But, I'm really glad you're reading!

So, day two. We slept in and were all excited for our second day! First we stopped off at Occupy Wall Street because we are "the people"and need to stomp that pesky 1%. To our dismay, this was the chaos we saw...

Nothin! Not an angry college student in sight! It was so sad. We cursed the bankers and went on our way. We then realized that the theatre playing Richard II was all the way up town so we got in a taxi and headed towards Broadway. Along the way, we looked to the right and saw this amazing man...

It is December and he is in orange shorts. It is 2011 and he is roller blading. This was amazing. We were nervous to drive in NYC and this modern day Indiana Jones is roller blading the streets. We were very impressed.

Ok, so down to Richard II. Here is the plot:

This is one of Shakespeare histories (aka one of the tough ones to wade through). It chronicles Richard II  being the king of England. It opens with Richard presiding over an argument between Bolingbroke (his cousin) and Mowbray (another nobleman), where Bolingbroke accuses Mowbray of conspiring to murder some other guy. There are lots of gloves thrown to the ground and they decide to duel! At the duel, Richard steps in and banishes both of them. Bolingbroke is banished for 6 years (perks of being the cousin) and Mowbray is banished -- in the words of the great Theodore "squints" Palladoris -- For-ev-er. While Bolingbroke is away he builds up an army and comes back to take over as king and throw Richard into a castle dungeon. A friend of Bolingbroke thinks it is a great idea to kill Richard to make Bolingbroke happy, so he goes ahead and kills him! Bolingbroke is not happy, but hey, he's now Henry IV. Hello next play!

Ok, so this play was not awesome. It was really well acted (and crazy expensive) and I'm pretty sure we dropped the median age about 20 years but all and all it was just not dripping with action. It was acted out in true Elizabethan garb. Here is the stage...

The guy who played Richard II was great but he was super whiny. I'm sure that is how he is supposed to be but we spent 3 hours watching a weasily guy worry. So, I didn't love it. You know what I did love? The ADORABLE couple in front of us. They had to be in their mid 80's and the husband was blind. He sat through the whole play with his head down just listening. At intermission he turned to the girl beside him and said "this is really great, don't you think"? I loved it! I loved him! I hope when I am older, and if anything unfortunate should happen to me, that I still do the things I love with such zeal! I just really admired this man. When his wife came back from the bathroom she ran her hand down his face to let him know she was back. I LOVED that too! What a sweet tender way to say hello. So, this made the play for me.

Afterwards, we walked to Times Square and played in Toy 'R Us. It was terrifying. Kids everywhere. Luckily, they had giant candy bars to distract me.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Chelsea

Titus Andronicus - WHAAAAT?

Public Theatre, NYC
December 17, 2011


Brad - A
Chelsea - A+

So, I can't even wait to explain this play. Just to sneak peak it, there were signs that said "this play has excessive blood and gore, not meant for small children" but let me start for the beginning. Ok, so we went to New York for truly 36 hours. We drove in Saturday morning to see FOUR plays and left Sunday night at 11pm (yep, back to DC at 3am I won't even touch on the level of tired or political debates that came out of us around 2am). So, this was play number 2 of the weekend. We went to dinner and did some research...

Serious research! I nerdily (I think that's a word, Brad would kill me for the madeupness of that) printed off what each was about and how it has affected our culture. Here is what we learned. Titus Andronicus is considered the red headed step child of the Shakespearian works. Some have tried to get it taken out of his canon and others have doubted that Shakespeare even wrote it. Personally, I think it is badass and Shakespeare (or De Vere) had an angry Mean Girls moment and wrote the craziest, angriest thing ever!

Here is the plot: Titus Andronicus is a war hero. He comes back from war with the Queen of the Goths and her 2 sons as prisoners. He comes home to 2 sons of the emperor fighting over who should be emperor since their dad died. People say "wait a minute Titus, you are awesome, you should be emperor!" Titus, because he's awesome, says "no no, I back the emperor's son Saturninus" so Saturninus (who had an awesome jerk from high school hair swoop) said sweet and makes the Queen of the Goths his wife! Now that the queen of the Goths is free and powerful, she declares revenge on Titus for capturing her and killing her other sons. So, here is where the crazy begins...Her son's rape Titus' daughter, cut off her hands and cut out her tongue. Then they kill her fiance and frame Titus' sons for it. She sends a man to Titus and says that she will give him his sons if he would cut off his hand as a sacrifice. He does and she "give" him his sons heads in repayment. Titus is peeeeved! He vows revenges, tricks the queen into sending over her sons, kills them, and feeds them to the queen in a secret dinner! It ends with everyone dead.

Yes, she has a hand in her mouth here. (I mean how do you hold it without hands? It's just logical). This picture and full review of the show is available in The New York Times.

So, you are rushing out to see it right?

But, I LOVED it. I know that seems morbid and crazy but it was so well done! First, the actors were amazing. Thank goodness this followed Twelfth Night! It was set in nowadays time but it was also really artsy so they didn't try to make it look realistic that everyone died. Instead they used BUCKETS of blood (seriously, for a part people had on ponchos) it was just so over done that you really felt the story. The set was also super interesting. When the play started there was nothing on stage but a stack of wood boards. Which seems wierd but throughout the story they used the boards as tables, pits, pictures, names and placed them all over the stage. It turned out really cool and by the end it was chaos of boards. I snuck a picture:

It does it no justice. It was awesome. I spent half the show with my hand over my mouth and I left with this bad and good sense of vengeance and shock. It definitely held your attention and the Shakespeare I expected from Shakespeare in Love was the flowery, wordy, sap so it was really interested to see this crazy side! I mean a woman ate a pie of her sons! When can you say that was your Saturday night?

Chelsea

Twelfth Night

Oxford Shakespeare Company - NYC
December 17th, 2011

Grades: Brad - A
Chelsea - D

Oxford and Students:

The clouds were thick over New York City as we exited to the Holland Tunnel. Ignoring such an ominous sign was an error of Shakespearean magnitude. Yet the silver lining here involved a pay-as-you-go, night-class production of 12th Night complete with Nikes, ESL olde-English, and Chelsea and Me. So, we decided to go to this production because the Oxford Shakespeare Company staged it. At this point, I may as well come out and admit that I am an Oxfordian. Oh sweet freedom-- like Ron Paul-Topia! Oxfordians are people who believe that Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, actually wrote the plays of Shake-spear, though not all Oxfordians agree with all of the theories embodied in the recent movie Anonymous. Regardless, my good friend Tom introduced me to Mr. Oxford. Tom, in fact, is an expert lawyer and Expert Oxfordian Now, Chelsea and I are big Oxford fans. Call us crazy, but first read Mark Anderson's Shakespeare by Another Name.

So, as you can see from the program, the theatre company, The Oxford Shakespeare Company, shares our Elizabethan leanings, and cheap printer paper...

But I digress . . . 12th Night is a great comedy. For fans of teen movies, the movie "She's the Man" is based on 12th night. In the play, after being saved from a shipwreck, Viola pretends to be a man to survive in Illyria, a new land. She also becomes Duke Orsino's page. The Duke sends Viola to woo his lady-love, Olivia. But Olivia refuses to love to respect her newly-dead brother and father. Long story short, Olivia falls in love with the Duke's page, Viola (who is pretending to be a man). In a a sub-plot, Toby and Fabian convince Malvolio, Olivia's quasi-butler, that she is in love with him. At the end of the play, Viola's twin brother shows up, marries Olivia, and Viola reveals herself a woman and marries the Duke.

In our production we saw, first-time actors play these delicate parts in a theatre (attached to a daycare) with 20 seats. In fact, just one room over, they were making gingerbread houses. I have to say these actors tried hard with disparate results.

The crowd was excited...

But they all deserve a hearty pat on the back for giving it the old college try. I wish they would have advertised the nature of this performance more clearly on the interweb, but . . . umm . . . I enjoyed it?

After the play we hopped on the train and rode up to St. Marks Street, the birthplace of punk rock. There we saw the restaurant below. Caption contest: "I will have a number two and a . . ."

- Brad, the 17th Earl of Bradford.

Gearing up for an Adventure.....

So, this weekend Brad and I are heading to the NYC for a 2 day Shakespeare extravaganza! We are seeing:
Cymbeline
Titus Andronicus
Twelfth Night
Richard II

It is going to be exhausting and fun. More details to come!

Chelsea

Competing Culture

So, because we are also normal human beings, we do things outside of Shakespeare. Like forcing our significant others to go to politically themed ballets! Que:

Yes, we went to the Washington Ballet presentation of The Nutcracker. Where the Nutcracker was classically portrayed by George Washington and the little girl played with her favorite Betsy Ross doll. Every young child's dream! Living in DC really does have the ability to change everything to historical politics (maybe we'll eat at the Founding Farmers, or We the Pizza; yes everything is politically punny!) But, it was fun and ballerina's are amazing and I am jealous of the talent oozing from them!

We also went and cut down our own christmas tree! We drove down a dirt road to a field of christmas! We looked over a thousand trees until it blurred into green and then there, with a beam of light and a small choir singing was our tree...

 We love him, perfectly round with minimal holes and most importantly small enough for Brad to singlehandedly conquer!

We had an awesome time and the place was adorable! They shook our tree, wrapped it up, and put it on our car. It was full service christmas!

And they made a huge snowman out of hay...HAY-mazing.

Happy Christmas!

Chelsea

O-mazing.

Folgers Shakespeare Theater, Washington, DC

December 1, 2011

Brad - A

Chelsea - A+

Othello and Shirtless Burritos.

The Folger Shakespeare Library is America's preeminent Shakespeare research institute. Before going there for the first time, I ate half a Chipotle burrito in ninety-two seconds. Chelsea got the tickets for this show, Row M, Seats 11 and 12. The theater at the Folger is a replica of an Elizabethan theater. It is a small theater with two levels (think the play scenes in Shakespeare in Love). It turns out odd number seats are on stage left and even number seats are on stage right. So, I sat next to a man who spoke only in metaphors, directly behind a pole, across the theater from my date.

So, Othello is a tragic tale of unbridled jealousy and race relations. Othello is a pimp. He is a fierce warrior, a lady's man, and a minority. His new wife, Desdemona, is the picture of innocence and hot. Very hot. One of Othello's colleagues, Iago, is jealous of Othello's success. So, he devises a plan to destroy Othello. As the play progresses, Iago sows seeds of doubt in Othello's mind about Desdemona's fidelity. By the end of the play, Othello is prescription crazy. And apparently, the actor that played Othello felt that his shirt hindered him from expressing this downward spiral. So, he chose not to wear it, a majority of the play.

This really was a great production: crazy sound-design, excellent slow-mo scenes, and fantastic actors. Oh, and when the show was over and I got to chat with Chelsea, the company was pretty good too.

On the short walk from the theater to the metro, we realized we really did have a good time. And on second street northeast, just behind the Library of Congress, the idea for Shakespeare in a Year was born. My goal is to morph this little blog into a book contract with movie rights (think Julia and Julia meets It's Always Sunny). Details to follow...

Brad-thello

Much Ado About Nothing - otherwise called a Cuban Danceparty

Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC                     
November 25, 2011

Brad - A
Chelsea - B+

So, we begin in our hometown by seeing Much Ado about Nothing in DC at the AWESOME Shakespeare Theatre here. Seriously, they are really impressive! I have never seen anything Shakespeare live so I thought it was going to be tights and talking to skulls but oh no, these thespians rocks it out cuban style. I was a bit frustrated because I wanted it to be old and classy but as Brad told me multiple times, it is very common for Shakespearian plays to be interpreted in all kinds of ways. Messing with the setting and time is very common. So, I sucked it up and went. But, I mean look at the playbill:

Here is the overview:

Benedick and Beatrice (in no way similar to the horrible Harry Potter villain) love each other but they are sworn bachelors so they just insult each other and pretend they hate each other to hide their feeling. It's like watching a teen drama. But, they are both really funny so you don't mind the banter. Their BFF's, Claudio and Hero, are also in love but they gush about it all the time. So, they decide to get married and the night before their wedding this mean man who walked all sinistery tricks Claudio into believing his fiance was cheating him. He is so peeved he decides to embarrass her at the wedding (and man he embarrasses her, I was uncomfortable watching it). Hero's dad says the best way to make Claudio feel bad is to fake that Hero died of embarassment. All the while, Claudio and Hero tricked Benedick and Beatrice into believing each of them loved the other one. So, the got all awkward around enough and hilarity ensued. So, people overheard the mean guys hunchmen talking about how they tricked Claudio and Claudio is told. Then he feels awful since Hero is dead and goes to her funeral to find she is alive! Oh, and of course Benedick and Beatrice fall in love! Que all cast dance number!

So, here are my thoughts: It was pretty good. However they broke into spanish sometimes and I am not a chica with a spanish ear so I was confused. Also sometimes they would all dance and sing, I don't think that actually happened in Shakespearian times. But, the actors were AMAZING and the story was really engrossing. So, all in all I enjoyed it but I don't think Cuban Style was my favorite.

Here is what was awesome....at the end Benedick stood up and said "Man is a giddy thing". Brad and I turned to each other and said "that's from Mumford and Son's" poor Shakespeare, you steal from Mumford. But, then we started noticing it all over. I was incredibly impressed with how awesome Mumfords lyrics are that the bulk of the song are lines from this play, including my favorite. At one point Benedick leans over to Beatrice and says "serve God, love me, and mend". I love this. I love it at that moment in the play, I love it in Mumford's lyrics. I just love the grandness of this simple phrase. I think we could all live by these words and be better people. I just think it's so wise and I'm glad we have Shakespeare to thank for it.

Also, it was Thanksgiving weekend and Brad's sister came in town and we got to personally meet this man:

He is huge! It is the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument on the mall and might I say he has an awesome location. It was pretty great. I think the best part is that he is always looking slightly to the right. hmmm.

Chels

So here we go....

So, how did this adventure begin? Like all adventures, I was sitting on a lilly pad, playing my banjo and this man rowed up. Ok, not really but I just saw The Muppets and it was so good! But really it did start with a movie just a way more serious one. We went and saw the movie Anonymous...if you haven't seen it I really do recommend it! But, it made me realize so much Shakespeare is the root of all the movies I love. Which it should be known I have an unhealthy stalker relationships with movies. This will become clear and terrifying around Oscar time. I also realized I know nothing about him! Yes, I watched dreamy Leo Dicaprio swoon over Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet but that's all I got! I also just needed a hobby.

So, I have one year from November 24th to see 37 plays in the flesh before I melt into failure sadness. These can be high schools, colleges, traveling troupes, really awesome Shakespeare pros, or maybe just 2 guys chatting at a renaissance festival! As long as it's live and its Shakespeare we will be there! I get to travel the east coast with this guy:

Hehe, I stole that from his computer. What a classy high schooler he was! Ok but seriously. now he's this guy:

And we are going to try and succeed at seeing all of the plays that came out of this mind:

Or maybe this mind:

Who knows, maybe there will be a map behind one of the playbills and we will solve the mystery! I mean if Nicholas Cage can solve them so can we!

So wish us luck!