Less famous plays by famous playwrights
Nov. 22nd, 2019 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livThanks to my parents for two cultural experiences for me and jack: first they pointed out that the triennial Cambridge Greek play was happening this year, and we managed to catch it. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, which doesn't get performed that often. And then they booked tickets for a cinecast of the RSC Timon of Athens on a date they actually couldn't make, so they passed the tix on to us.
So Oedipus at Colonus covers basically Oedipus' death. I was thoroughly impressed with the production. Sida in the title role verged a little on the hysterical at times, but it's very difficult not to over-act when you're doing an entirely Greek language play and besides a lot of the script is Oedipus raving, so I'm not really going to criticize that. (I still remember directing Hippolytus and telling my chorus to put more emotion into a tragic scene, and these teenaged girls looking at me hollow-eyed: this is all we have, there is no more.)
They made really good use of lighting, sound and music to create an integrated artwork, which was thoroughly modern and also really in the spirit of Greek theatre. Having dabbled in Greek theatre myself, I had never previously seen a traditional Greek chorus done in a way that worked for me as well as this cast. They used a mixture of singing and rhythmic speech, solo and unison in a way that preserved the scansion but didn't sound forced. Really really effective. I think to make it really authentic they would have needed more movement; most of the time the chorus were standing in a circle around the speaking characters, each underlit from their podium like people telling horror stories round a campfire. It was very atmospheric, but also very static. I really liked the way the chorus members stepped forward to take on minor speaking roles like messengers, and walked round the circle to indicate travel to or from a different location.
I am still not sure what I think about the implications of representing a deathbed scene as if it were taking place in a modern hospital, with Oedipus on an adjustable bed, attached to an IV drip, lots of screens and monitors, people bustling about in white coats, harsh fluorescent lighting. I think in some ways it helped to make his death seem more real to a modern audience, because we so strongly associate death with hospitals. But it seemed to sort of undermine the setting of Oedipus dying alone in an obscure (but sacred) grove, far from home, needing the gods and the king Theseus to intervene to protect him. And just, the idea that death isn't death unless there's a flatlining heart monitor involved, it's such a contemporary cinematic metaphor.
Soon after seeing the play I happened to have a conversation with a colleague about helping her young children deal with the death of their pet goldfish. Apparently she decided to make up an elaborate story about taking the goldfish to the vet and the vet deciding there was nothing that could be done and gently putting the goldfish to sleep. I was really surprised by that; to me there didn't seem anything comforting about pretending the death was medicalized. (Pretending something less scary had happened than death, sure; in my worthless non parent opinion I think I wouldn't try to hide the fact of death from a child, but I can see why someone would want to.) But making up an entire fiction about a vet just didn't seem to add anything.
I wouldn't particularly have sought out Timon of Athens, but an RSC performance at the Swan was very well worthwhile. The cast were outstanding, particularly Kathryn Hunter in the title role and Patrick Drury as the loyal steward Flavius. All the cast did an excellent job of both sounding natural and keeping the poetry and the period timbre. I loved the costumes and the stage set, the amazing contrast between the the glitter and glamour of the first act and the squalid poverty of the second.
Like Goldman's casting of the Sophocles, Godwin cast ToA gender blind. Or rather, they specifically changed the gender of some of the characters, including Timon, to match the gender of the actors, and replaced gendered names like master or lord with mistress and lady, (whereas in OaC they just happened to have female-presenting actors playing male roles, but Oedipus was still definitely male, a father, a king etc). There was an interview with Hunter where she said it didn't change anything if Timon was a rich woman instead of a rich man. And I'm not sure she's right, but also I couldn't put my finger on anything specifically gendered about the script. Unlike a lot of Shakespeare there was basically no war-of-the-sexes humour. The only really gendered thing was a minor appearance of a sex worker in the band of rebels, where Timon makes a big thing about her corrupting the city and spreading venereal disease. (Not exactly sex work positive, but it's in the middle of a string of curses against people from all walks of life, so I don't know if it changes much to have a woman instead of a man ranting about whores.) It was a really interesting casting choice to have Debbie Korley as Alcibiades, got up like a Civil Rights activist with a big afro and a black leather jacket, really playing up the fact that the actor is a Black woman rather than just casting in a neutral way.
jack commented that this is the first time he'd seen a Shakespeare play with no famous or memorable lines. And yeah, by Shakespeare standards the script does seem kind of second-rate. I found it really hard to follow the second act specifically. I usually don't have trouble with Shakespearean English, but often I just couldn't understand the lines or the elaborate metaphors. And at a more structural level I didn't really understand what was going on. Timon died, cursing everybody and trying to use her magically discovered treasure to destroy Athens rather than restore her own fortunes. I didn't know if we should understand that Alcibiades' rebellion was going to succeed, or if we as the audience should want corrupt Athens to be destroyed, or should be rooting for the restoration of civic order, or what.
I could probably say something clever about comparing the two plays, with great but cursed men dying in miserable obscurity and cursing Athens. But mostly it's just coincidence that I happened to see both in the same month.
jack: first they pointed out that the triennial Cambridge Greek play was happening this year, and we managed to catch it. Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, which doesn't get performed that often. And then they booked tickets for a cinecast of the RSC Timon of Athens on a date they actually couldn't make, so they passed the tix on to us. So Oedipus at Colonus covers basically Oedipus' death. I was thoroughly impressed with the production. Sida in the title role verged a little on the hysterical at times, but it's very difficult not to over-act when you're doing an entirely Greek language play and besides a lot of the script is Oedipus raving, so I'm not really going to criticize that. (I still remember directing Hippolytus and telling my chorus to put more emotion into a tragic scene, and these teenaged girls looking at me hollow-eyed: this is all we have, there is no more.)
They made really good use of lighting, sound and music to create an integrated artwork, which was thoroughly modern and also really in the spirit of Greek theatre. Having dabbled in Greek theatre myself, I had never previously seen a traditional Greek chorus done in a way that worked for me as well as this cast. They used a mixture of singing and rhythmic speech, solo and unison in a way that preserved the scansion but didn't sound forced. Really really effective. I think to make it really authentic they would have needed more movement; most of the time the chorus were standing in a circle around the speaking characters, each underlit from their podium like people telling horror stories round a campfire. It was very atmospheric, but also very static. I really liked the way the chorus members stepped forward to take on minor speaking roles like messengers, and walked round the circle to indicate travel to or from a different location.
I am still not sure what I think about the implications of representing a deathbed scene as if it were taking place in a modern hospital, with Oedipus on an adjustable bed, attached to an IV drip, lots of screens and monitors, people bustling about in white coats, harsh fluorescent lighting. I think in some ways it helped to make his death seem more real to a modern audience, because we so strongly associate death with hospitals. But it seemed to sort of undermine the setting of Oedipus dying alone in an obscure (but sacred) grove, far from home, needing the gods and the king Theseus to intervene to protect him. And just, the idea that death isn't death unless there's a flatlining heart monitor involved, it's such a contemporary cinematic metaphor.
Soon after seeing the play I happened to have a conversation with a colleague about helping her young children deal with the death of their pet goldfish. Apparently she decided to make up an elaborate story about taking the goldfish to the vet and the vet deciding there was nothing that could be done and gently putting the goldfish to sleep. I was really surprised by that; to me there didn't seem anything comforting about pretending the death was medicalized. (Pretending something less scary had happened than death, sure; in my worthless non parent opinion I think I wouldn't try to hide the fact of death from a child, but I can see why someone would want to.) But making up an entire fiction about a vet just didn't seem to add anything.
I wouldn't particularly have sought out Timon of Athens, but an RSC performance at the Swan was very well worthwhile. The cast were outstanding, particularly Kathryn Hunter in the title role and Patrick Drury as the loyal steward Flavius. All the cast did an excellent job of both sounding natural and keeping the poetry and the period timbre. I loved the costumes and the stage set, the amazing contrast between the the glitter and glamour of the first act and the squalid poverty of the second.
Like Goldman's casting of the Sophocles, Godwin cast ToA gender blind. Or rather, they specifically changed the gender of some of the characters, including Timon, to match the gender of the actors, and replaced gendered names like master or lord with mistress and lady, (whereas in OaC they just happened to have female-presenting actors playing male roles, but Oedipus was still definitely male, a father, a king etc). There was an interview with Hunter where she said it didn't change anything if Timon was a rich woman instead of a rich man. And I'm not sure she's right, but also I couldn't put my finger on anything specifically gendered about the script. Unlike a lot of Shakespeare there was basically no war-of-the-sexes humour. The only really gendered thing was a minor appearance of a sex worker in the band of rebels, where Timon makes a big thing about her corrupting the city and spreading venereal disease. (Not exactly sex work positive, but it's in the middle of a string of curses against people from all walks of life, so I don't know if it changes much to have a woman instead of a man ranting about whores.) It was a really interesting casting choice to have Debbie Korley as Alcibiades, got up like a Civil Rights activist with a big afro and a black leather jacket, really playing up the fact that the actor is a Black woman rather than just casting in a neutral way.
jack commented that this is the first time he'd seen a Shakespeare play with no famous or memorable lines. And yeah, by Shakespeare standards the script does seem kind of second-rate. I found it really hard to follow the second act specifically. I usually don't have trouble with Shakespearean English, but often I just couldn't understand the lines or the elaborate metaphors. And at a more structural level I didn't really understand what was going on. Timon died, cursing everybody and trying to use her magically discovered treasure to destroy Athens rather than restore her own fortunes. I didn't know if we should understand that Alcibiades' rebellion was going to succeed, or if we as the audience should want corrupt Athens to be destroyed, or should be rooting for the restoration of civic order, or what.I could probably say something clever about comparing the two plays, with great but cursed men dying in miserable obscurity and cursing Athens. But mostly it's just coincidence that I happened to see both in the same month.
