the Ashland trip
Jul. 17th, 2006 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenithblueWe had a phenomenal time in Ashland, in spite of my being sick. It was pretty much everything I wanted in a weekend. The plays were all incredible.
The Merry Wives of Windsor was the first thing we saw, and I think my favorite. It's one of the more raucous and ribald of the plays, and it was played with lots of great over-the-top physical comedy. The costuming was really fun--it wasn't done with loyalty to any particular period but rather with a sort of general whimsy (bright colors and fishnet stockings and crazy hairstyles). It was all done sort of with a nod to the sitcomish situational comedy of the piece, complete with wacky music for the interludes and lots of pratfalls. It was energetic and wicked and very cleverly done.
The next day we did two--The Importance of Being Earnest and Cyrano de Bergerac. Importance was of course hilarious, as ever. I always end up a little exhausted by the constant zingers and one-liners, even though I laugh at every one; I'd imagine it's a little like being at a party with Oscar Wilde and listening to him crack wise all night and talk shit about other people. Fun, but maybe draining. And Cyrano was incredible, all the more so for being such a hard play to pull off. Marco Baricelli, the actor who played Cyrano, was possibly the most impressive performer we encountered (can you imagine how hard it is to impart dignity to a character who not only is a little ridiculous in the writing itself, but is also now a bit of a cliche?). It was a beautiful play and of course I cried a lot. That was also the play that had me thinking the most afterwards, and maybe if I'm feeling perky later and have spare time (an increasingly rare commodity) I'll jot some of said thoughts here. But for now this will suffice.
And then the last play Lovescats and I saw was Two Gentlemen of Verona (Drawgirl and her mom saw King John, which they liked but thought less well acted than the other things we saw). Gentlemen was enjoyable but flawed. They made some staging choices that were really fun, and some that didn't do it for me (for example, staging Verona as Amish country, which seemed to me a metaphor they didn't think out entirely), but they did a good job making sense of the incredibly problematic ending. They also characterized the bandits as contemporary punks and goths, which made for a good time. And Valentine was fucking hot when they gothed him up (who isn't?).
A very satisfactory weekend, all in all!
The Merry Wives of Windsor was the first thing we saw, and I think my favorite. It's one of the more raucous and ribald of the plays, and it was played with lots of great over-the-top physical comedy. The costuming was really fun--it wasn't done with loyalty to any particular period but rather with a sort of general whimsy (bright colors and fishnet stockings and crazy hairstyles). It was all done sort of with a nod to the sitcomish situational comedy of the piece, complete with wacky music for the interludes and lots of pratfalls. It was energetic and wicked and very cleverly done.
The next day we did two--The Importance of Being Earnest and Cyrano de Bergerac. Importance was of course hilarious, as ever. I always end up a little exhausted by the constant zingers and one-liners, even though I laugh at every one; I'd imagine it's a little like being at a party with Oscar Wilde and listening to him crack wise all night and talk shit about other people. Fun, but maybe draining. And Cyrano was incredible, all the more so for being such a hard play to pull off. Marco Baricelli, the actor who played Cyrano, was possibly the most impressive performer we encountered (can you imagine how hard it is to impart dignity to a character who not only is a little ridiculous in the writing itself, but is also now a bit of a cliche?). It was a beautiful play and of course I cried a lot. That was also the play that had me thinking the most afterwards, and maybe if I'm feeling perky later and have spare time (an increasingly rare commodity) I'll jot some of said thoughts here. But for now this will suffice.
And then the last play Lovescats and I saw was Two Gentlemen of Verona (Drawgirl and her mom saw King John, which they liked but thought less well acted than the other things we saw). Gentlemen was enjoyable but flawed. They made some staging choices that were really fun, and some that didn't do it for me (for example, staging Verona as Amish country, which seemed to me a metaphor they didn't think out entirely), but they did a good job making sense of the incredibly problematic ending. They also characterized the bandits as contemporary punks and goths, which made for a good time. And Valentine was fucking hot when they gothed him up (who isn't?).
A very satisfactory weekend, all in all!
