William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the most influential playwrights in history, and his plays have been performed and studied for centuries. From the timeless tragedy of Romeo and Juliet to the hilarious antics of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s plays continue to captivate audiences around the world. Whether you’re a fan of tragedy, comedy, or romance, there’s a Shakespeare play for everyone. So why not revisit these timeless classics and discover the magic of Shakespeare for yourself?
There’s a long-standing debate about what it means to produce your own interpretation of Shakespeare, and what the limits should be. How closely do you have to track the original plot? How many characters do you need to keep? Stuff like that. Tell me that the Lion King has elements of Hamlet and I’ll agree with you. Tell me that it’s a modern adaptation of Hamlet and we’ve got an argument on our hands. An evil uncle and redemption for a murdered father isn’t all you need to call yourself Hamlet.
Then again, I’m bored with every Macbeth interpretation between about a “powerful” husband and wife where all we do is swap out the environment. Media moguls, restaurant owners, samurai warriors, mafia. But can we break it down more? Do we have any interpretations of Macbeth as a woman? What about as a child? If we take the standard “theme” of Macbeth to be ambition, heaven knows that there are plenty of ambitious teenagers out there roaming high school hallways and plotting takeovers of everything from the cheerleading squad to student government.
What if Macbeth were a 13-year-old child star trying to make it big and Lady Macbeth her pushy stage mum? Throw in a séance and a geriatric make-up artist with a vision and, snap, crackle and pop, we’ve transported Macbeth to a television studio in 2006.
And so we have Mackenzie, a project by Australian playwright Yve Blake. I’m intrigued by the changes here – the gender flip and the age shift most notably, but also Lady Macbeth as stage mom? Brilliant. Every Macbeth I can think of has them as a married (or close enough) couple. But what about the power a mother wields over her daughter, no matter how ambitious the daughter? And where does that daughter’s ambition come from, was it ever really hers? Or is it just planted there from behind the scenes by Mom whispering in her ear?
Sadly this fascinating new idea is limited to being a stage play in Sydney, Australia, so my chances of ever seeing it are pretty small indeed! But I wanted to shout it out here because I love the idea and wish I could see more.
I’ve seen multiple links about this upcoming Lady Macbeth game from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I think I may have even posted about it in the past. But it seems closer now to reality, so I wanted to dig in deeper and see if there are some hints about how we’ll be able to play it. (Spoiler alert – alas, not yet.)
Lili has now been shown at Cannes and the Venice Film Festival, which I still don’t fully understand because isn’t it a videogame, not a film? Or is it really going to turn out to be a film that’s got just enough interactive elements that they’re pitching it as a game?
In Lili, one must enter a hacker’s den with a USB stick in hand, don headphones, and follow the poetic instructions of the Hecate collective — Macbeth’s three witches, reimagined here as hackers.
Ok, I’m with you so far. Are you this Lili character? She never actually interacts with the witches, so probably not.
Lili begins as an initiation, where the player is asked to take a vow and accept the hacker persona, giving you agency within a moral grey zone. One assumes control of the game’s surveillance technology to the fullest, as you have access to Lili’s personal documents like her marriage certificate, photos, and passport, and can tune into one of the three different CCTV cameras placed in her house as well as her phone and computer screens.
Ok, so we’re not Lili, we’re spying on Lili, which is cool from a game perspective. But I’m not sure who that makes us, and how it maps to Macbeth.
At one point, you are prompted by the Hecate witches to shut off Lili’s access to a YouTube makeup tutorial, just like the Iranian government can do it at any time. You can then control Lili’s VPN connection and, with that, the flow of information.
Again, interesting. Reminds me a little of the David Tennant / Patrick Stewart version of Hamlet, where they kept showing us angles through security cameras and really playing up the sense of paranoia. Here we’re taking that even further, it’s not just what Big Brother knows, it’s what power they have over things like your access to information.
But will we ever get to play this game? <starts skimming…>
The creators behind Lili are hoping to keep the momentum going to raise funds for the full version of the game,
Aw, man! So basically it’s still just a demo to be shopped around the festivals, and probably will be for some time. What a shame. The ideas sound fascinating, even if they’re not as directly related to Macbeth‘s text as one might hope. It does appear to be a VR game, regardless, so even if it does get made you’re presumably going to need an Oculus or something similar.
Still, we can hope! I’ve been doing the Shakespeare Geek thing for 25 years now and I’ve written about a whole lot of Shakespeare video games – some big, some small. Some made it out the door, some never did. Who knows where this one will end up.
The much-anticipated movie adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet hits theatres this Thanksgiving, and the trailer dropped this week. Let’s watch!
Ok, thoughts?
I never actually read the book. It came out in 2016 as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series by Random House, a project to create modern novelizations of many Shakespeare classics by well-known authors. I did read Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood and Macbeth by Jo Nesbø, but something about Hamnet just didn’t work for me. I don’t think it really fit the pattern of the others, first of all. Are you retelling Hamlet, or are you imagining a life where Shakespeare’s son didn’t die? I wasn’t into a story about the latter. When tragedy happens in real life, I don’t find it a useful exercise to imagine how life might have been different. I don’t find it hopeful, I find it depressing.
But, that’s just me. Maybe I’ll try it again, before the movie? I definitely want to see the movie. I saw All Is True, and I lovedAll Is True – except the bits about Hamnet. I’m nothing if not consistent.
Ok! Let’s talk about the trailer. Somebody who’s read the book, fill me in, because right off … who is Agnes, and is she a witch? When we’re not blaring the soundtrack and the cinematographer is not taking inspiration from Millais’ Ophelia, the first bit of dialogue I got was, “If you touch people, you can see their future.” So, then, this is neither a reimagining of Shakespeare’s life if Hamnet had lived, nor a retelling of Hamlet? It’s a fantasy?
Is he wearing a cardigan?
Really, that’s about all their is to say about the trailer. We see repeated shots of Paul Mescal as Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as Agnes, and we hear a whole lot of soundtrack. We have no idea what the plot is, we get no meaningful dialogue or meet any supporting cast. It’s almost like the trailer’s made just for people who read the book, which isn’t how these things usually go. Usually the movie goes out of its way to appeal to the audience that hasn’t read the book.
So, people who’ve read the book, what do you think?
Ok, I had to get all those stories out of the way, sorry about that. For me, those were the highlight of the night.
How was the play? It was good. Fine. I’m not a big fan of this one because there’s not really a lot to work with. The plot is thin, the characters for the most part are so shallow a casual audience-member will easily lose track of which one is which. And the ending is just nuts.
It dawned on me this year that AYLI is basically a teen sitcom storyline. It’s all “OMG he likes me what do I do what do I say?!!” with lots of giddy screaming and running around. It’s definitely funny at parts, a real crowd pleaser when it’s being over the top obvious and not lost in the wordplay. But there’s nothing to sink your teeth into and discuss.
Or is there?
I don’t know if I just never noticed it, or this production really played up the angle, but it seemed this year that Ganymede leaned really heavily on the “How can you not see that I’m Rosalind?” moments. He says, talk to me like you’d talk to Rosalind Just go ahead and call me Rosalind. There’s even an awkward scene with a kiss. Orlando’s confused about a lot of feelings, to put it mildly.
Which got me thinking, Maybe this is obvious to the younger crowd maybe I’m just an old man trying to understand. But …let’s start the play in the forest. Orlando meets a new friend, Ganymede. Ganymede certainly looks and talks and presents himself like a fellow boy. But Ganymede’s also obviously much more comfortable talking about girl things. He wants to tell Orlando what girls want. He wants Orlando to talk to him like a girl. And then, just like that, one day Ganymede is gone and Rosalind is in their place.
We the audience know that it’s Rosalind disguised as Ganymede. But, and I’m sure I’m going to get my terminology wrong here, what if Ganymede was in fact a character that on the outside was presenting themselves to the world like a male, but inside, identified as female? Until one day they are?
Orlando, for his part, doesn’t seem to have a problem with his attraction for this character, either. I don’t think Orlando cares who Ganymede identifies as. Is that what they mean by “pan”?
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Like I said, I’m just an old dad trying to understand a lot of new things. Tell me that AYLI isn’t just about “gender bending” and “cross dressing,” tell me it’s about gender identity, and suddenly I’m paying attention. Then it’s something more than just a farce to laugh at. Then it’s got a point to make the audience think about.
How about I get off my soapbox now and share some pictures?
Rosalind and CeliaTouchstoneJaquesGanymede and OrlandoOrlando as WolverineDon’t get on Duke Frederick’s bad sideThe Wedding
Here we go again! As I’ve gotten older I’ve started telling myself, “It’s ok if I miss Shakespeare on Boston Common this year.” The kids have gotten older, schedules are busy. And, perhaps most importantly, they’re doing As You Like It – which they did back in 2008, which I saw, and reviewed.
But then I tell myself, “This is my night. This over all other days is my chance to bask in my Shakespeare world and go surround myself with all things Shakespeare.”
A little taste of Arden Forst while I get the interesting stories out of the way.
So I did what I also do every year. I dressed up in merch – this time donning my “Shakespeare Makes Life Better” long-sleeve – and filled up my little goodies sack with an assortment of stickers, magnets, and 3D Shakespeares, and we were off. We had a special guest this year, as my daughter’s got a new friend who is both obsessed with Shakespeare and has never been to a free Shakespeare in the park show. So she’s all in.
We stop for gas before heading into Boston, pulling in behind a big (big) pickup truck. That happens to have its backup lights on. So as I get out, not wanting him to roll into me accidentally or something, I say, “Hey did you know that your…” and then they go off. “Never mind, I say.” The driver of the big (big) pickup is a big fellow in his own right. He’s not giving “biker,” but he’s definitely the size and shape of somebody who you wouldn’t want to mess with at the bar.
So he’s pumping his gas, I’m pumping mine, and I can see out of the corner of my eye that he hasn’t stopped looking at me. Have I offended him in some way by mentioning his lights? Does he think I’m stupid because I didn’t know they’d go off? I avoid his gaze for as long as I can.
“Are you an English teacher?” he asks.
I get it immediately. “No,” I say, “Just a fan.” He looks confused. “I assume you’re referring to my shirt?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says.
“We’re big Shakespeare fans. We’re actually going in to Boston tonight to see Shakespeare in the Park.”
“Oh,” he says. “What play?”
“As You Like It,” I tell him.
“That’s a good one!” he says, looking … wistful? I wonder what he was thinking.
So, that’s one Shakespeare encounter I did not expect. You never know who you’re going to connect with around Shakespeare.
We get to the park, and the normal routine begins, which basically amounts to keeping busy for almost 2 hours waiting for the show to begin. I take the easy way out of my mission, handing my bag of Shakespeare goodies to the kids and saying, “Your mission is to find people to give stuff to.” And off they go. Once they’re gone I of course think, “I should have kept some for myself, I hope they don’t give everything away.” But they don’t, they’re back soon enough to let me know that they gave out some stickers.
The night progresses, the crowd grows There are volunteers walking around who have programs to give out, as well as stickers of their own. The longer I wait, a plan forms in my head. I’ll give something to a volunteer. I’ll tell them, “How often does somebody give you something?” I have two 3d printed Shakespeares left. One is bigger than the other. I will wait until one of the volunteers comes by alone because it would be rude to give two different sizes. Yes, I think about these things. Maybe it comes from having kids and having “everybody gets the same” drilled into my brain. Or maybe I’m just thinking of excuses to chicken out like I do every year.
The darker it gets, the less they wander, and I’m missing my opportunity. Finally a young man walks by who we’ve already seen before. He’s given a program and stickers to the young couple next to us. He’d asked me if I needed a program, too, but we already had a couple. I try to get his attention, but he walks past, and I think that’s it, it’s dark, show’s starting, my chance is past.
Until he’s standing next to me. “Did you need something?” he asks.
I brandish a tiny Shakespeare. “For you,” I say.
He’s speechless. “Wait, really?” he says. “Seriously?”
“You’re out here giving everybody free stuff, how often does anybody give you anything?” I ask.
“Never!” he says, “Nobody’s ever given me anything!”
“Well exactly!” I tell him. “Now you can go show off to the other volunteers that you got something.”
And he does, I watch as he goes over to the two nearest volunteers to excitedly show them his prize, gesturing back at me (probably, “Look what the guy in the Shakespeare Makes Life Better shirt just gave me!”) One of them looks over to me, I make eye contact and smile. Had she come over, I would have given her the other Shakespeare. I don’t know what I would have done if both of them had.
It gets better.
I’m enjoying this. I made somebody happy with Shakespeare. Many people have commented on my shirt. It’s a good night, I don’t want it to end (even though the show hasn’t even begun!) The young woman next to us has been friendly and polite, having first asked if she could sit there (not a courtesy that is always shown), and asking me questions about how the show is organized. So I fish one of my magnets out of the bag and reach it over to her. “Would you like a magnet?” I ask. She definitely would. There’s a funny age gap at work here – as somebody of Dad age, I think that giving out stuff like stickers is childish and, no, nobody wants a sticker. But I have yet to meet a 20-something, all my kids now included, who doesn’t say, “Hell yeah I want a sticker.” Or in this case, a magnet.
“You’re bringing so much joy,” she says.
She has no idea how much that meant to me. I’ve tried to build up the courage for years to be the guy who exudes Shakespeare wherever he goes. “Shakespeare makes life better” isn’t just a tagline for a website. I deeply and truly believe it and want to put actions to words. Tonight, finally, I got to do that. I got to bring joy to people, through Shakespeare, and even have it acknowledged. I don’t remember when I’ve been happier.
This is a long post, and I never even talked about the play. I guess that’ll have to be part two!
