Atomic Shakespeare, Revisited
Aug. 15th, 2006 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomSounds as if they're gettin' a mite frisky in Edinburgh.
What cool new interps of Shakespeare would you like to do? And, even if you don't have any, what's your favorite nonstandard? Besides the obvious choices of West Side Story and Forbidden Planet (and its recursive stepsibling, Return To The Forbidden Planet), I'm very fond of "Atomic Shakespeare" on Moonlighting, the 1920s retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream going on in the comic strip Pibgorn, and the whacked-out Richard III in The Goodbye Girl.
And I would love to stage Hamlet against a backdrop of contemporary American presidential politics.
What cool new interps of Shakespeare would you like to do? And, even if you don't have any, what's your favorite nonstandard? Besides the obvious choices of West Side Story and Forbidden Planet (and its recursive stepsibling, Return To The Forbidden Planet), I'm very fond of "Atomic Shakespeare" on Moonlighting, the 1920s retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream going on in the comic strip Pibgorn, and the whacked-out Richard III in The Goodbye Girl.
And I would love to stage Hamlet against a backdrop of contemporary American presidential politics.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:15 pm (UTC)OT but I have to SQUEE!
Date: 2006-08-15 07:23 pm (UTC)Your Icon wins!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:22 pm (UTC)When it came to "that" speech, Hamlet spray painted To Be Or Not To Be on the back wall and then turned and delivered the rest of the speech. It was brilliant.
Orson Welles complete restructuring of the Scottish Play is brilliant, the play makes much more sense (even if the accents are a little silly)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 12:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:25 pm (UTC)There's the dual production of Hamlet and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead described in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin -- they perform the plays on alternate nights, and the casting and costuming (and staging, for the overlapping bits) are identical. I would so love to see something like that.
There's the production of The Merry Wives of Windsor we saw in the Park one year, set in the 1890s in Windsor, Idaho. It's astonishing how well Falstaff fits in an Old West setting.
And there's the Shakespeare-sequelae LARP I've been wanting to write: "Thirteenth Night, or, This Is Illyria." It's a year later, and Malvolio is back to have his revenge!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:25 pm (UTC)That said, I am a big fan of McKellan's 1995 version of Richard III set in a version of 1930s England, with Richard II as a Fascist, and also featuring Nigel Hawthorne and Robert Downey Jr., among others. (As it happened, I was just looking up that film on IMDB today.)
I wish I had seen a production of Othello that Patrick Stewart did about a decade ago in Washington where the casting is reversed and he is the white leader of a band of mercenaries in an African version of Venice (and where he has a tattoo on his scalp!).
And there is of course a scene on the TV show Greg the Bunny where the puppet actor Warren DeMontague delivers a very good reading for Claudius while auditioning for Hamlet. An all Muppet (or Muppet-derived) version of this play is screaming to be produced! OK, asking nicely.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:32 pm (UTC)I was trying to remember what play that was. I had Julius Caesar in my head and I knew that wasn't right.
I heard amazing things about it
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 12:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:40 pm (UTC)I'd actually rather like to revisit the Victorian-gothic Macbeth I directed eight years back, but with that eight years of experience under my belt and a budget. (I'm not picky. Anything in four digits would be an improvement.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:41 pm (UTC)And at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, O also knocked my socks off.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 08:15 pm (UTC)I haven't seen She's The Man yet, but it's on my list. Along with a zillion other things... *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:45 pm (UTC)That and Measure for Measure featuring a Dobson prototype left in charge of the Government. He could force Isabella to wear a black beret.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:43 pm (UTC)I would love to see this. I was about to say it's almost redundant, but then I realized how many people genuinely wouldn't get it if not spelled out...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 05:57 pm (UTC)I don't know if this counts, but I once saw a production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead where each time Hamlet came on stage, they projected scenes from the Lawrence Olivier Hamlet film onto a screen that was part of the set. The reason being that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren't in Sir Olivier's Hamlet; they're just cut completely from the film.
I'm a R&GAD fantatic. *heh*
Sadly, I'm also fond of the stupid little film we did for my senior year in high school, where one of the vignettes was Romeo and Juliet with Romeo as a semi-stalker who talks Juliet into leaving her boyfriend and running off with him.
not Bill, but...
Date: 2006-08-15 06:21 pm (UTC)How about "Cyrano de Bergerac" in an inner-city black setting? Only extant community I can think of where offenses to honor are supposed to be settled in blood and the power of a well-timed putdown is a widely recognized weapon.
Actually, I do have a Shakespeare one. Back when Christopher Reeve was alive I had a sort of fantasy of him doing "King Lear" from his wheelchair. Takes the whole theme of loss and helplessness to a new level.
TBF, who believes if it doesn't have sword fighting it's not a chick movie.
Re: not Bill, but...
Date: 2006-08-15 06:47 pm (UTC)You have seen the Danes-DiCaprio Romeo + Juliet, right? :)
Re: not Bill, but...
Date: 2006-08-15 07:45 pm (UTC)Dude. This would have been killer. He could have matured into an amazing Lear anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:40 pm (UTC)Oh, hell yeah.
Date: 2006-08-15 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:57 pm (UTC)Ariel would of course be adorable and fuzzy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:21 pm (UTC)I saw Richard the 2nd done a-la Clockwork Orange THugs
It was amazing
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 07:43 pm (UTC)The TV show "Eureka" had as a subplot in a recent episode a production of AMND done as 50s60s-style Space Opera. I would love to have seen that on its own.
There was a recent straight-to-video "Scotland PA," putting the Scottish Play in late 20th century small-town America, which had its moments but could have been done better.
Don't know if this qualifies to your question, but one of my alltime favorite movies is "Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 10:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 08:23 pm (UTC)Or maybe Henry V set in Iraq.
Julius Caesar in the Babylon 5 'verse.
The Tempest with ST:TNG.
And just to see the wincing: Macbeth and Buffy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 11:08 pm (UTC)The Royal Shakespeare Company comes back to Ann Arbor this fall, and Patrick Stewart is starring in The Tempest (which I'm not gonna see) and Antony and Cleopatra (which I am).
Oooooh, Patrick Stewart!
Date: 2006-08-15 11:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 08:59 pm (UTC)In subsequent years he made a great Othello.:)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 10:48 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, hell yeah.
Date: 2006-08-15 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 11:23 pm (UTC)a few years back...
Date: 2006-08-16 02:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 02:28 am (UTC)My sister was a theater major in college; she had an assignment to "re-imagine" a Shakespeare play: she went with Romeo and Juliet, set during the American Civil War. Too bad she didn't get to stage it...
One must also wonder about Queen Alexandra and Murray, as referenced by The 2000 Year Old Man... :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 03:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 09:25 pm (UTC)Shakespeare
Date: 2006-08-16 10:21 pm (UTC)Re: Shakespeare
Date: 2006-08-17 05:40 pm (UTC)