I noticed some stories lately talking about Slings & Arrows, the undisputed “greatest show about Shakespeare” ever. But this was the first one to drop the word “prequel” and now you have my attention.
I’d do some “If you’ve never seen Slings & Arrows” banter here, but seriously, if you’ve never seen Slings & Arrows, stop reading and go watch it. It’s just that good. To recap, each of the three seasons maps to one of Shakespeare’s plays – Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear (with some side plots thrown in, too). We’re introduced to the series via Geoffrey, our director, who once had a nervous breakdown after he played Hamlet (and yes, now he’s directing it). He’s haunted by the ghost of his own former director. Meanwhile we get to see what makes a Shakespeare festival work, from how they rehearse to how they make money.
And now they’re pitching a prequel about the origins of the festival itself, back in post war America in the 1950s? I’m not sure what play that’s going to map to, or how much of the original cast would still be relevant, but the original just has so much credibility that I’d get in line to see what the creators come up with next. I hope somebody picks it up.
Show of hands, does it annoy anybody else that you can walk into half a dozen stores in the mall these days and see a wall of “Funko Pop” characters from practically every television show that’s had even a hint of an audience, and yet, as far as I’ve been able to tell, not a single character from classic literature? I want my Shakespeare! I have a growing army of Shakespeare figurines slowly taking over my desk, and I always want more.
So I was very excited when the folks at Jackiz Studio reached out to let me know about their Shakespeare Figurine Kickstarter!
Ain’t he precious? The artistic interpretation is a little unique, I’m not going to lie. But I’m looking at him like I’d look at a newborn baby. Do you look at the baby and say, “Whoa, yikes, what’s up with that hair?” Nope. You love it. It didn’t exist, and now it does, and the world is a little bit better because of it, and who cares about the hair.
This Kickstarter just started (they contacted me to help kick it off) so there’s plenty of time to get in on it while all the backer rewards are still available. They’re hoping to reach their stretch goals and even make an accompanying card game and mobile app, but what I think is the best one is a golden figurine which I think looks even cooler than the original. (I’ve got to get back in touch with them and ask for clarification on what exactly “golden” means, just so we’re clear that people don’t think they’re getting a solid gold Shakespeare!)
Let’s make this one happen, people. Tell your family, tell your friends. Every Shakespeare Geek needs more stuff like this on their desk. One success brings about more. I’ve already planted the idea with them of doing actual Shakespeare characters, so soon we might have our own (virtual) wall where we can pick from Romeo or Hamlet or Orsino or Rosalind… just like I’ve always wanted 🙂
So I was thinking today about a future where we have people on the moon. You know, typically Friday afternoon stuff. Like you might read in a Robert Heinlein novel. I was talking about the next generation being the ones who might live on the moon, who might be the first to perform Romeo and Juliet on the …. wait a second.
How you gonna swear by yonder blessed moon when you’re standing on the fool thing?
For that matter, how is Hamlet going to ask Polonius, “You see that cloud?”
Here’s the game. Which of Shakespeare’s plays are going to need to do some editing once they’re performed on the moon? For bonus points, put on your director hat and tell us how you’re going to creatively get around those lines. Is Romeo going to swear by yonder blessed Saturn?
One of the biggest decisions to be made, when we started planning this vacation, was whether to see a show at the RSC or the Globe. I know, I know, people are screaming “Both!” at the screen right now, but let’s just agree that real-world considerations (time, money, not wanting to push my luck dragging my family to *too* much Shakespeare…) won out, and there would be one show.
But which? The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), if you’re not familiar, is in Stratford-upon-Avon, while Shakespeare’s Globe is in London. We planned to visit both cities, so we had a choice. People may wish to discuss my broad strokes here, but the way I figure it my choice came down to:
The RSC is where you see the best Shakespeare in the world. Depending on when we go we might even get to see some big-name Hollywood actors (and then maybe see them afterward at The Dirty Duck). The downside to that is if you’re not a reasonably serious fan of Shakespeare, the difference between “this is an outstanding show” and “I don’t understand what’s going on” will probably become apparent quickly.
Shakespeare’s Globe is intended as a tourist attraction, an exact recreation of the Globe as it was in Shakespeare’s day. You’ll sit where and how Shakespeare’s audience sat (right down to paying extra for a cushion), you’ll see his plays performed on his stage. I do not expect this to be the greatest Shakespeare I’ve ever seen. I expect this to be more of a “package deal” where the “Wow, we’re actually here!” factor plays heavily.
We decide to see a show at the Globe. Specifically, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My family is reasonably familiar with that one, and it’s a raucous comedy, so worst case scenario we’re all laughing ourselves silly all night. There are worse things.
The whole area of the city around the Globe is apparently loaded with historical landmarks, and I would have loved to go visit them all, but time was not on our side. We’d started the vacation with three days of nothing but Shakespeare, and now that we were in London and had a few Shakespeare free days, I didn’t think my family was in the mood to chase me around the streets of London just to see random “Here’s where a certain building stood 400 years ago!” signs.
I did, however, see something on the map that says “Shakespeare Mural.” I had no idea what that was and wanted to find it. I thought I had an idea? Turns out it was much, much better than I was expecting…
I hate that the tuba guy is there (even though his instrument was a flamethrower). But others have told me he adds character to the picture, so what can you do?
We get to the theatre early enough to sit around and have a drink, but not early enough to catch the last tour. That was my fault, I was riding that “I will not ask my family to do more Shakespeare stuff” thing harder than I should have, and by the time I mentioned the tour and they said, “Let’s go on it!” we’d missed it. Ah, well.
I take the opportunity while we’re sitting in the cafe to stuff a bunch of Shakespeare Geek stickers in with the napkins. I wonder if anybody found them? 🙂
We get inside, and at last, we’re here (with cushions!) There’s a pretty strict “no pictures while anyone is onstage” policy, which I saw enforced, so here’s the only picture I got:
That piñata hanging there tells the theme, which I’ll come back to in a moment.
We open as expected with Theseus and Hippolyta. Hippolyta is portrayed as an animal, literally shipped here in a box, bound and gagged and barely able to speak the language. The best way I can describe Theseus is … Eric Idle, from Monty Python. Trust me. If you’ve ever heard Eric Idle speak (and you no doubt have, he’s done a zillion voiceover things), this is our Theseus. He’s afraid of Hippolyta, he’s here for comic effect. Which is not a stretch, because as I soon learn, pretty much everything is here for comic effect. Everything is over the top, play to the audience.
We meet our youths, we get our plot, we head for the forest. Cue the fairies! Remember that piñata theme? In comes this New Orleans-style parade of monstrosities, like a cross between a walking pinata and that new show The Masked Singer. Some have really long draggy arms, some have weird monster eyes. Titania is not done up like that, she looks more like she’s straight out of Mardi Gras.
Our Puck is interesting. The costuming is nothing special, just a t-shirt and some deely-bopper antennae, but there’s a reason for that. The entire cast plays Puck. Huh? It took me a while to realize that they weren’t just doubling. As far as I could tell, at one point or another pretty much every member of the cast donned a Puck t-shirt for a scene or at least part of a scene. For the scene where Puck is looking for the flower (“I go, I go; look how I go, Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.”) it worked well, like he’d cloned himself to go that many times faster. But in a later scene, the various Pucks are actually competing with each other to finish his lines. Definitely entertaining, but I’m not sure there was a bigger message or just a cool gimmick.
The funniest gimmick, speaking of, is the audience member they brought up on stage as one of the Mechanicals. This poor chap (Simon) mostly stood there, uncomfortable, while the cast all played off him like an improv game. And it was hysterical. At intermission my kids said to me, “Would you go up there if they grabbed you?” and I told them, “Yes, but I probably wouldn’t be as funny, because I’d be trying to play along with the play as I know it. The fact that this guy doesn’t know the play is half the fun.” When Bottom is translated and everybody runs away screaming, Simon just stands there. Even I’m in the audience yelling, “Run away, Simon! Run away!” And then Bottom gave him the cue: “Why do they run away? (run away, Simon! run away!) this is a knavery of them to make me afeard….” and he ran away.
Now let’s talk about Bottom, because if there’s something I didn’t like about the play, this was it. Not the actress’ performance, that was fine. I mean, there was nothing at all deep going on, just 100% playing to the audience. I’m talking about how obscene it got.
We talk about the dirty jokes in Shakespeare. We know that he had to deliver what the audience wanted, and we know that this troupe is playing up to that angle. But when you’ve got this many kids in the audience, I wonder about some of the decisions made…
Though it’s typically pointed out that Bottom is just given an ass’s head, he’s not completely transformed into a donkey, this time he’s done up head to toe in one of those piñata costumes so it’s hard to tell. Doubly so when he (I’m going to keep saying he, although it’s an actress playing the role, for reasons that are about to become obvious) reaches down between his legs and pulls out this…well, this long thing that’s dangling. I wonder whether that’s supposed to be a tail, then I remember that only his head is a donkey and think, “Oh, dear. Please don’t let the kids ask me about this.” We then see that there is a flute at the end of it, upon which he plays a tune. Then, just to drive the point fully home, he looks right at a member of the audience and says, “Whistle cock.”
(Sidebar – I thought, “Huh??? Why don’t I remember this?” and when I was able, I went back to the script:
I will walk up
and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear
I am not afraid. Sings The ousel cock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill,–
*sigh* I guess? Maybe that’s a one-off joke? Oh, how mistaken I was about to be.
Let’s just jump to where Titania and Bottom meet, and she’s taken by the size of his … instrument. She tries (?) to play her own tune on it, does so poorly, then announces, “It’s been a while” and moves on. I’m wondering at that point whether she was as uncomfortable as the parents in the audience. Not to mention any music teachers, who were no doubt thinking “That’s not what you do with your tongue.”
Don’t worry, it gets worse. You know that scene where Bottom is just fully into the whole “Ok, I guess these fairies are going to do everything I tell them” thing? This whole scene has taken place in a big dumpster, by means of a prop. It’s where Titania originally fell asleep, it’s where she takes him for whatever it is they’re doing, and it’s where they are when the fairies are … waiting on him. Except whatever they’re all doing to him is rather exciting. Building to a climax, even. Suddenly a jet of some unidentified liquid comes shooting forth! Everybody gets uncomfortable (nay, grossed out) and the scene continues.
There’s more of that sort of humor, but that was the worst of it. In the big scene at the end, when Wall comes out (played by a woman), you can make a guess where they decided to put the chink that Pyramus and Thisbe have to put their lips against. Stuff like that. I don’t want to sound like a prude. My kids are old enough now that they understood what was going on. And it’s not like I saw many 10yr olds running around among the groundlings. Shakespeare and people could do bawdy. I just didn’t expect it to be quite so graphic.
Overall it was exactly what I expected (except for the obscene parts). It was all about the audience, all about making sure they get the joke and laugh. Nothing was subtle. My family enjoyed it, that’s the important part. We got to see the Globe. Quality of performance aside, I think that if I’d chosen RSC at the expense of not seeing the inside of the Globe, I would have regretted it.
One quick story before I go! We had excellent seats, front row of the top section. We filled the row except for one seat, taken by this young woman who was there by herself. She told us that she’s a graduate student (though not in Shakespeare), and that her studies allow her to get to London regularly enough that she’s been to see a show at the Globe four times. She apparently had some sort of social media presence of her own, because when I saw her trying to take a bunch of selfies and offered to get a picture for her, she told me that the selfie angle was part of her signature style. But she did have me take a few. She then took a few of my family, which came out nice but of course I can’t post here. She said she’d never been to Stratford, so I pulled out some pictures we’d taken earlier in the week, and she was suitably jealous. 🙂
Before leaving I gave her one of my Shakespeare Geek stickers. Never did catch her name, but if you ended up following me and you’re reading this, hello!
Of all the things on our list to do, the most random was one I discovered on my own. Apparently Sir Ian McKellen owns a pub called The Grapes. And sometimes he’s even there. I told my kids about this. What I actually told my kids was, “Ok, I don’t expect there’s any version of our story that results in me meeting Ian McKellen. I’m just saying that, if we do? I will fangirl so hard you will forget you know me. I will scream like I’m watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.” They don’t really get that last reference, but the point is valid.
London’s a big city, and we’ve got lots to see. The idea of saying to my family, “Hey, after Buckingham Palace, how about we go find this random pub that may or may not be huge?” just doesn’t seem to ever come up. At night, though, I get on Google Maps and I look to see where it is. It’s a bit of a hike from “stuff”. I see no obvious “Hey, while we’re in the neighborhood, oh look at this place!” opportunity.
Until we take our boat ride on the Thames, and the tour guide actually brings up The Grapes as one of the tourist attractions. We can’t see it from our trip, but it’s in everybody’s mind now. The next day when we’re at the Tower of London I bring it up on my phone and it *looks* close, but not really close enough that we want to go on an adventure. But that night I do figure out the nearest tube (subway) stop, so I have that info. Google tells me that it’s 8 minutes from that stop.
Long story short the kids convince my wife that we should go for it, because despite not being a “real” tourist attraction, this is the kind of thing I came here to see. So they green light the adventure and we’re off. We get off at our stop, immediately have no idea where to go next, ask somebody. He shows us a map that shows our destination outside the “15 minute walk” window and tells us it’s more like 20 minutes, and that we should take the bus. We have not had luck with busses so far so I suggest we walk.
We walk outside and immediately forget everything the guy told us. I’ve long said that my achilles’ heel is “directions while in a building.” People say things like, “Ok, you’re gonna go out here and you’re gonna take a left” and I’m already lost, because I go outside and there’s a whole central square outside and at least half a dozen possible answers to “take a left”.
We ask a policeman who says, “Oh, Ian McKellen’s place?” he’s the first person that knows it. Tells us that it’s at least a half hour walk. That number keeps going up. We’re convinced now to take the bus. But he also tells us that Sir Ian is there frequently, and that he himself (the officer) had walked in to get a drink and had that, “Wait, did Gandalf just pour my beer?” moment. Says he’s got Gandalf’s staff up in a case over the bar.
We get on the bus we’ve been told. You know what else you’re supposed to know other than the bus number? The direction. After a few stops I get it into my head that we are going the wrong way. So we get off, cross the street, intend to get on a bus the other way. We ask the driver if this one will be going where we’re going. He says he’s never heard of it – the place, or the street. Great. I’m showing him a map. He says to try a different bus.
We get on a different bus. Again, a few stops in, conversation with another rider, we’re told we’re going the wrong way. Again, I try to ask the driver, driver has no idea what we’re looking for. Keep in mind that every time we get on and off the bus it’s taking money off our “oyster cards”, I have no idea when they’re going to run out, with no way to refill them in the middle of nowhere, and we’re lost. Flag down a taxi? They don’t always take credit, and I don’t know how much cash it’d be to get back home. Uber? My international data connection is far from stable enough to rely on that.
Of course, ou know what family’s do in situations like this. We’re hungry, we’re tired, we’re lost. So we’re fighting. Do we keep going? Do we go home? How do we even begin to do either? It’s not a good day. I’ve long since given up the possibility of finding the place, because even if we do find it, unless Gandalf himself comes out to greet us, I doubt it’s going to live up to the effort we’re putting in. It’s been a few hours now.
A bus driver has suggested to us that we’re walking distance to a police station, so we start walking that way. We walk past an Indian restaurant where a man has come out for a smoke, so we give it on last try. “Two minutes down this road,” he says, walking around the corner of his restaurant. “Sir Ian’s place.” Gives us very specific directions, walk past the green building, etc… Really? We were that close the whole time? Amazing. Still don’t know how we’ll get home, but at least we’ve achieved our goal.
We’re walking our last mile (so to speak), and I think the whole fam is still thinking “yeah, sure” but as we pass all the milestones the guy told us I’m thinking this has to be it, this has to be it. And lo and behold, look at the sign I see?
It’s smaller than I expected. I think I thought it was its own building. But that doesn’t matter. After taking our pictures I head for the door – but first cope out the ubiquitous posted menu, to plan ahead for what kind of food my kids will eat. It is 3pm.
A sign on the other side of the menu says “Absolutely no under 18s.” I almost die, but I go into denial instead and figure that perhaps that’s a “at night when it’s a bar” thing.
“Kitchen’s closed,” says a man standing outside smoking.
I wish I had a better ending for the story. I have a few moments of disbelief, most of the “My wife is gonna kill me” variety. The man is quite nice, suggesting other places we might try. We tell him that we’re American tourists who really came all this way specifically to see this place. He tells us that “Ian’s out filming” anyway. We end up walking all the way back to the tube station (which, after the variety of “bus going in the wrong direction” missteps, wasn’t all that far away) and having dinner back in more familiar ground. Never even went in. I kind of wish I at least went in, to see the inside. I wonder if the dude was lying, like some sort of gatekeeper, and Sir Ian was there at the bar. I know of course he wasn’t, but you never know, you know? I was just so dejected, the last thing I wanted to do was walk in, looking like a fool who wasn’t going to stay for a drink or get any food, seeing nothing even remotely resembling “this is a place where you want to take pictures of stuff.”
On Instagram and Facebook some followers were saying, “That’s my local place!” and “Ian is always there.” I said, “Next time you see him, tell him Shakespeare Geek was looking for him!”
I noticed some stories lately talking about Slings & Arrows, the undisputed “greatest show about Shakespeare” ever. But this was the first one to drop the word “prequel” and now you have my attention.
