Review: 1935 Midsummer

January 27, 2025February 3, 2025 ~ duane ~ 1 Comment

There are many Shakespeare movies that I know about, have written about, have seen screenshots and clips of. But sitting through all of them is a challenge for many reasons. I’m slowly chipping away at a very long list. Happily, I can now move a certified classic to the WATCHED list.

Max Reinhardt’s 1935 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream deserves its place in Shakespeare Film history. It picked up two Academy Awards (on four nominations) and featured a cast of names still known today – James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Mickey Rooney to name just a few. Watching it now is a weirdly nostalgic experience for a Gen Xer like me. As we get to the big hysterical finish, all I could think of was how much it reminded me of watching the Three Stooges or Little Rascals. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if you remember those shows (even if you watched them with your parents or grandparents!), maybe you’ll see what I mean.

Let’s talk about dreams for a second. They’re used in metaphors way too often. “Oh, this new job is a dream!” We use dream to mean “the ideal thing I wanted.” Not that. I mean real dreams. Real dreams to me are more like, “Nothing makes sense, and yet I’m oddly ok with all of it. Why am I suddenly back in high school, why are my coworkers here, why is there a freestanding toilet in the middle of the auditorium stage?” While you’re in the dream and not asking any of those questions, it all seems normal. Only after you step out and wake up do you think, “Well, that was weird.”

When I thought of that analogy for this movie, I intended it to be negative, but why not make a Dream movie that feels like a dream?

Let’s Make This More Visual

I’m sure many of us have seen productions of The Winter’s Tale, famous for its “Exit, pursued by a bear” stage direction, featuring no bear.

Not so fast! The forest of Athens seems to be home to actual bears now. My best guess is that somebody spotted Helena’s line, “No, no, I am as ugly as a bear; For beasts that meet me run away for fear:” and thought, “Ok, Helena is running away from a bear.”

“Now I will believe that there are unicorns!”

Unfortunately, that’s a line from The Tempest, not Midsummer. I have no idea how this one got here. The word unicorn doesn’t appear in the play that I can find.

How Were The Fairies

Now, let’s talk about the fairies. Most of the fairy budget was spent on Titania’s retinue. They sparkle, they glow, and they have lengthy dance numbers. At one point, they’re literally floating into the sky by the dozens:

Wow! If this is the entrance for Titania, I wonder what Oberon’s entourage will look like?

Uhhh… yeah. There’s a lot of these guys. They even have a band at one point, and you seriously wonder if the original Star Wars Cantina scene got the idea from this movie.

Later, though, they do get a costume change…

For some reason that I genuinely don’t understand, they suddenly all have wings. Black, scary wings. It’s very much like the part in The Tempest when Ariel suddenly transforms into a Fury, but I don’t recall such a scene in Midsummer. Just all of a sudden, they went from “little people in Halloween masks” to “I don’t know what’s going on but I don’t like it, keep those things away from me.”

What of our stars, Oberon and Titania?

Oberon gets the better deal here. Titania gets to sigh and oooh and ahhh with hand on cheek a lot. She sounds a great deal like Glinda from Wizard of Oz. Oberon, meanwhile, is a walking special effect. Not only does he have this cool crown of branches (that, in fairness, reminds me of Groot from the Marvel movies), but he’s always surrounded by stars. This is another one of those dream-like things. Why are there stars around him? How are they there? Are they actual fireflies? Are they really there or an illusion? If he swatted at them would they move? We don’t get any answers, of course. This is just how he goes about life.

But that’s ok, Titania gets to one-up her Oberon…

Titania flies wherever she wants. Oberon rides a horse. Again, there’s that dream world logic. Some people fly, some walk, some ride horses. But, are you ready for this?

Oberon can fly, too. SO WHY IS HE RIDING A HORSE?

The Mickey Rooney Show

You can tell how old someone is by how they remember Mickey Rooney, a wonderful actor with a record-breaking career that includes credited roles in 10 decades, from the 1920s to the 2010s.

As our Puck, he was just 14 years old and honestly does a spectacular job for someone so young. There’s a lot of creative license in how to play Puck, and Rooney plays to his strengths. He’s a child, running around and causing mischief. When he’s in the mood to act like an animal, he makes animal noises. When he finds things entertaining, he laughs with genuine glee. When an adult tells him what to do, he enthusiastically goes about trying to do it properly, though he doesn’t always succeed. All while delivering a lot of Shakespeare, in makeup and costume. Sometimes he flies. According to the trivia he actually spent much of production with a broken leg and had to be wheeled around the set!

Experience It For Yourself

Honestly, just see this one if you can. There are places where you really think you’re watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and the entertainment is to be found in mocking how bad it is (seriously, I can’t do justice to the “goblin fairies’). There are random ballet sequences just inserted at will. The special effects deserve their own award for just how broad a spectrum they covered. People fly, people fade in and out of existence, Bottom transforms back and forth before our eyes. Then there are the dimestore masks, and this fairy being carried off into the sunset:

I repeat, it’s like a dream. When it’s done you’re left thinking, “What in the world was that? Did it make sense or not? I can’t really tell.”

Review: Denzel Washington as Macbeth

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 ~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I suppose the official title of this production is “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in the title roles, but that’s too much to fit in a title. You all no doubt know which production I’m referring to. Though it came out in 2021, I’ve finally sat down to watch the entire thing.

If you are a student of the art of film-making, you’re probably going to love this. It’s one of those final products that is all about the director’s vision, regardless of what actors he had to work with or what source material they spoke. Every scene is clearly driven by, “Ok, I want it to look like this.”

For my part, I hate that. Shakespeare, to me, is all about the character. Why are the characters speaking to each other the way that they do? What’s their backstory, their motivation? Why are they making the choices that they make? I can get that on a bare stage with no costumes. I don’t need special effects.

Macbeth's Castle — Seriously, who was their architect? What if they did have kids? That’s so dangerous.

Worse, I think that the visual backflips in this version are disjointed and distracting. Like when Macbeth and Banquo have first encountered the witches (more on this in a moment) and get to the line “Whither are they vanished? Into thin air…” but they are still right there. Or when the murderers set Macduff’s castle fully ablaze in a matter of seconds, just so we can get the image of people falling into the flames. Don’t get me started on the MC Escher-esque castle that the Macbeths live in. It’s like they borrowed some scenery from David Bowie’s Labyrinth.

Starring Kathryn Hunter as The Witches

Let’s talk about the witch(es) for a moment because clearly, she/they are the best part of the production. I would see a one-person show of just this performance. Kathryn Hunter alone plays the witches. Is she playing one, then, or three? Or one body housing three spirits? Yes, I guess, to all the things. If she didn’t play it so well, I’d be taking serious issue with the inconsistency in the presentation. Sometimes, she’s just one person speaking in three (or more?) voices. Other times, she splits into three. Or, she’s one body casting three reflections or shadows. She’s also a bit of a contortionist, which only adds to the otherworldliness of the whole performance. When I first started watching this at home on my laptop, my son walked by and said, “What the hell is that? That’s terrifying.”

I’d watch a one-person show of that because the other actors have no choice but to break the illusion. Why does Macbeth refer to “them” in the plural when there’s just one person there? Something like that leaps off the screen and pulls me out of the moment. It’s a minor thing, I suppose. It just feels disjointed, as I mentioned above. It is as if the director is saying, “Yes, I know what the script says, but I know what I want the visual to be, even if they don’t match!”

Bring It Home, Denzel

Even if the director didn’t care much about how the actors played their parts, they still had to find something to work with. Though I admit I wasn’t hanging on every word, I liked parts of Washington’s performance, such as Macbeth. His explanation of killing Duncan’s guards can be summed up as “Sometimes I get into this weird mood where I randomly kill people, I can’t explain it,” and it is the implied, “Would you like to be next?” that cranks up the tension. Everybody probably wonders precisely what happened, but they know they’d better not question it too deeply.

Toward the end, I also enjoyed the way he played his assumed immortality to a point. Everything’s falling apart around him; most of the witches’ prophecies have come true, yet he’s still almost laughing at it all, believing himself to be invincible. His speech to Young Siward is a cross between a serial killer and a Marvel supervillain. Unfortunately, this is ruined by a ridiculous fight scene, but I’ll take what I can get.

See It Or Skip It?

I’ll end how I started. If you’re a fan of the art of filmmaking, this is a great example. You can pause at any point and break down why the director wanted that scene to look like it does. It’s disorienting 100% of the time. There are claustrophobic shots, there are shots looking straight down. There’s nothing extra in any of the scenes, it often feels like bare stage. For me, though, I think that takes away from the Shakespeare. Shakespeare didn’t make any of those decisions, Joel Coen did. Which is fine if your plan is to go see the Coen version of Macbeth. But I’m more about the actors, I wanted to see more of Denzel Washington’s Macbeth. I got some. I liked some. I just wish it was more about the words and the actors and not the visuals.

Macbeth on his throne — Macbeth doing his best Thanos impression.

Review: Commonwealth Shakespeare presents The Winter’s Tale on Boston Common

July 28, 2024July 28, 2024 ~ duane ~ Leave a comment

I want to say our Commonwealth Shakespeare streak continues, but we actually missed a show in 2019 when my mom was sick. Cymbeline, which I’ve never seen, but have no real personal feelings for. Other than that hiccup, the 2024 show marks 19 shows we’ve seen by this group at this location. We also missed back in 2005. Hamlet, which I’m still salty about.

I have no special love for The Winter’s Tale, a later and therefore lesser-known play, filled with difficult to pronounce characters (Autolycus? Perdita? Polixenes?) and the usual kitchen-sink of Shakespearean comedy switcheroos. I tend to only refer to it to make a rapidly aging joke about how it’s Shakespeare’s Maury Povich Show. Leontes, you are the father!

Seriously, though, quick plot summary for those who need it. This is really two plays smooshed together at the end. Leontes and Polixenes, kings of neighboring nations, are long time best friends. Leontes becomes paranoid that Polixenes got Leontes’ wife, Hermione, pregnant. Polixenes flees the country, Leontes jails his pregnant wife for treason. The Oracle says that Leontes is wrong, they’re innocent, Leontes still clings to his paranoid belief even after his son and wife both die of grief. He refuses to take care of his new baby daughter and demands that she be left somewhere to survive on her own if that’s what the gods want. That’s our first story.

The second half leaps forward 16 years — Shakespeare literally makes “Time” a character who comes out to talk to the audience — and we meet teenage Perdita, whose been raised by the kindle shepherd that found her. Perdita’s in love with Florizel, son of Polixenes. Polixenes is having none of it, however, as he will only allow his son to marry a princess. See where it’s all going? This is a Shakespearean comedy, so as I always tell people with a handwave, “hijinx ensue.” All is straightened out in the end, Perdita reunites with her father, she gets to be with Florizel because now we know she’s a princess … and oh hey look, Hermione comes back from the dead. That’s Shakespeare for you.

So how was this particular production? Let’s start with some pictures! Click on individual pictures to expand.

Hermione and Leontes — A very pregnant Hermione pleads her innocence to her husband Leontes

Camillo pleads with Leontes. — A very pregnant Hermione pleads her innocence to her husband Leontes

I quite loved it, honestly. I was afraid that my family would not be able to follow it very well, for all the reasons I listed above. You can barely figure out from moment to moment who is who, much less what’s happening. But from the opening scene, they had it just right. Leontes was clearly a jealous man driven to near insanity as his paranoia consumed him. It’s quite dark. We’re at a comedy, this king has been presented with his baby daughter, and he’s literally screaming, “Throw it in the fire.” The music was ominous. It was scary, as it perhaps should be, to set up the second half.

The women – Hermione and her friend Paulina – pretty much stole the show. Both did an outstanding job of standing on a stage full of men, knowing full well that they’re entirely powerless, and yet speaking their minds in full voice, with heads held high. You knew that they had been wronged, and waited for the men to get what was coming to them.

The longer I go with these the more uncomfortable I get because I don’t want to misrepresent anyone, or leave anyone out. So what I’ll do this year is leave a link to the play info so people can explore the individual artists’ stories in their own words rather than mine:

The Winter’s Tale

Review: Twelfth Knight (audiobook)

June 25, 2024July 22, 2024 ~ duane ~ Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, Drew from Macmillan Publishers reached out to ask if I’d like a review copy of Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth. Specifically, the audiobook version. This was very serendipitous as, (a) I much prefer audiobooks and (b) I was about to go on vacation and needed something to read. I happily said yes. Now here we are! I say this by way of disclaimer – I may get a few details wrong here and there. I don’t have a text to doublecheck when I’m not sure.

Retellings of Shakespeare are a staple in modern young adult novels. Our buddy Bardfilm practically has a whole category for reviewing them. Twelfth Knight, perhaps obviously, is going to retell Twelfth Night with high school students. If you’re getting flashbacks to She’s The Man (2006) or Just One Of The Guys (1985) for the Gen-Xers , well, so did I. The natural question with most modern Shakespeare adaptations is how you modernize the, shall we say, less-than-modern aspects? The ghosts in plays like Hamlet and Macbeth are one obvious example. For comedies like Twelfth Night, it’s the “girl dresses like a boy and nobody seems to notice” thing. Not to mention the “I have a twin brother than nobody knows about” thing. You can only stretch the “suddenly I go to a different school where nobody knows me” thing so far.

Twelfth Knight doesn’t bother with any of that. Right from the start, Orsino/Olivia/Viola/Sebastian (“Bash”) all know each other as themselves. They’re all in the same classes together at the same school. Orsino is the football star, Olivia is his former girlfriend. Viola is unfortunately portrayed as the class bitch — and I say it like that for a reason, more on this later. Her brother’s a bit of an add-on, he doesn’t get much storyline unless he’s necessary for somebody else’s. Honestly at one point early in the story when I wasn’t paying attention I thought Bash was the name of Viola’s cat.

Here’s the modern twist that keeps it interesting, though — online videogames. Viola’s big into role-playing games, and as anyone with experience knows, the landscape for a girl trying to play videogames with the boys is just as dangerous as being unaccompanied in Illyria. Her interactions with the fellas come in one of three flavors — either they hate her for being better than them, they think she “owes them” whenever one of them so much as acts human toward her, or they just plain ignore her. See where this is going? Of course she plays online as a male character. (Cesario, in fact. In this world, Cesario is also the name of a character from a popular “Game of Thrones” ripoff that they all watch.)

What does this do to the plot? Orsino the football player / class president is injured, leaving him with only two things to occupy his time. First, he’s of course on the homecoming committee so he has to take part in those meetings, which also involve bitch Viola (again, trust me). Second, however, is when he’s introduced to online videogames as a way to burn off some of his unfulfilled need to compete and win at something. Where, of course, he quickly meets Cesario, a much better player than he is. With context clues it’s not long before he realizes that Cesario goes to his school, so Cesario admits to being … Sebastian.

From there I think you can see how it plays out. The fact that “Viola’s a bitch” plays heavily in the text. She’s called one all the time, by everyone, as if the word is a literal weapon straight out of one of her games. The story’s told primarily from her point of view, so we get the inside look at why she’s like that. She, like many women, lives in a world where standing up for yourself when you feel threatened gets you branded with that label. You get tired of trying to fight it, so instead you adopt it and wear it like armor. From that point forward it’s self-fulfilling, and the vicious cycle repeats.

But we know how this goes. Orsino gets to spend time with Viola (as Viola) via their committee meetings, and enlists her help to figure out why Olivia broke up with him. Olivia, meanwhile, is suddenly Viola’s best friend and confides in her a number of highly personal things that would absolutely give Orsino the answer he wants and are very much not Viola’s to tell. Meanwhile Viola’s playing the double life as Cesario, who Orsino thinks is Sebastian. Who, by the way, has no idea that he’s been pulled into this whole story. Orsino learns who the real (i.e. not a bitch) Viola is, Viola comes out of her armor and learns to trust people. Except there’s still that whole “I’m actually also Cesario” thing that she has yet to tell him. How will that work out?

I like this version. I like how it pretty seamlessly blends the double lives of these kids, going to school with one face and then getting behind the computer with another one. The author manages to tell a new story with new dynamics while still keeping many of the core elements of the original story.

Two things I didn’t love. One, it tries a little too hard to map to the original where it doesn’t need to. This story has all kinds of new characters – parents, best friends, etc… – yet the author still felt obliged to sneak in other football players like Volio, Curio, and Aguecheek. None of those names fit the story’s context (Orsino is borderline as it is), and it would have made the novel stronger to just change them to something unrelated or drop the characters completely.

Second, there are some reasons this doesn’t work well in audiobook. As part of creating an original story, the author has added diversity to the story. Fine. Orsino is black. Viola is Viola Reyes, who I believe is supposed to be Phillipino? Olivia is Olivia Hadid, and presumably Arabic? These details are part of the story. Time is spent with extended families, among other things. Parents’ expectations of their children is a driving force in the main characters’ growth. I’m ok with all of that (and, as I noted at the outset, I apologize if I confused any of the details). My point is that it doesn’t work in audiobook. With just two narrators, the voices all start to blend, and you end up differentiating Olivia and Viola by which one is perky and which one is nerd-bitchy, and not at all by the fact that they’re supposed to be from opposite ends of the world culturally. It ends up feeling like a disservice is done to their backstories. Why add cultural diversity if it ends up whitewashed?

Overall, I’d certainly recommend it. A lot of ground is covered that has nothing to do with Shakespeare. Orsino’s worried that a late injury has destroyed his chances of playing football in college. Viola is not the only girl who discovers the hard way that a boy being nice to you can suddenly turn very dark. All of these kids are in a constant battle of trying to figure out who they can trust (their parents included), while navigating all the obstacles that life’s going to throw in their way. All while trying to come to terms with the difference between the person they want to be and the person they’re projecting to the world, and when it’s safe to reconcile the two. Available now on Amazon (and not just in audiobook!)

Review: Ghostlight

June 21, 2024June 21, 2024 ~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Let me get this out of the way first – we need more movies like Ghostlight. It’s neither “movie version of Shakespeare” nor “modern adaptation.” It’s a regular movie, with a plot of its own, that happens to use Shakespeare as a backdrop to tell its story. I will always watch movies like this.

I only heard about this movie about a week or two ago, so I’m excited that I got to see it so quickly. All I knew was that it’s a family drama, where the actors who play the family are in fact a real-life family, and that a production of Romeo and Juliet is central to the plot. I’m in.

Something’s wrong with this family. Dan, the father, walks through his construction worker job like a ghost. His daughter, Daisy, has run out of chances at school and now teeters on the edge of expulsion. And Sharon, the mom, tries valiantly to keep the family together when it’s obviously falling apart. Something’s happened to these people. There’s talk of a lawsuit that none of them are sure they are ready for. They scream at each other for seemingly random reasons at the drop of a hat.

Through a series of fortunate(?) events, Dan finds himself unwillingly volunteered to help out the community theatre group that’s been practicing in the abandoned movie theatre across from the street he’s been jackhammering. They’re doing Romeo and Juliet and need a Lord Capulet, though as the story progresses and we learn the characters, roles ultimately shift.

From there, you probably know how it goes. This is a story about the healing, bonding, and cathartic power of not just Shakespeare but theatre in general. There are many scenes of silly rehearsals as Dan loosens up around his new adopted family. Most of them behave as if they’ve never done Shakespeare, admitting freely that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Dan even asks his daughter if she knows the play (the daughter, on cue, recites the prologue that she had to memorize for AP English) and how it ends. If this had been a movie about learning to express your emotions through art, Shakespeare would have been replaced with oils or pastels. He’s just the medium.

It’s being praised in places as one of the year’s best movies, but I won’t go that far. It’s disjointed in its plot, with some loose ends that don’t get resolved. In a movie where the best acting is done when characters are screaming at each other, the scenes where they’re trying to be funny come up short. Some important details are held back, but as soon as a little bit is revealed you can begin to put the whole story together.

The Shakespeare’s not great. Too often the script is cut, so if like me you’re there whispering along with the lines you’ll be frustrated at all the random cuts. If you do see it, I thought that literally the best moment of Shakespeare was when the mom asks the dad to recite some for her. It was hesitant and awkward and beautiful because of how honest it was. He whispered after, “I won’t do it like that on stage,” and I said aloud, “No, do it exactly like that.”

Ultimately, it’s where the story does not play into expectations that it’s at its best precisely because of how honest and real it is, and that’s where it gets the praise. This is a small group of over 50-year-olds doing a play about teenage suicide. The audience, right along with the other characters in the movie, has to get past the shallow physical aspect to the essence of what theatre is all about. Peter Brook had a famous quote like, “When a man walks across a bare stage, and another man watches him, that is all that’s needed for theatre.” This is what I thought as our construction worker first walked into the theatre. I thought, “Whatever he does and however he does it, that’s the story I want to watch.”

Parts are frustrating. I’ve never been an actor, never done the silly rehearsing exercises (“red ball! RED BALL!”), but even I threw my hands up in the air when the director invited a new member into the group and said, “Pick any role you want.” I only later realized that one of the existing members was doing something of a Nick Bottom, trying to claim every role for himself, who got continually frustrated as they were taken from him. But come on, these people presumably auditioned (it says so in the dialogue). You don’t insult them by telling a newcomer they can have whatever role they want.

See this one if you can. It’s no triumph of Shakespearean acting, but that’s the whole point. It’s not about the quality of the performance, it’s about the humanity that anybody can bring to the task whether they’re actually any good at it by some objective standard.