Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
aces25
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/13/04
#1Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 2:18pm
What are some outrageous Shakespeare interpretations you've seen?
Have you ever seen a tragedy made comedy intentionally?
#2re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 2:58pmWould R&J set in "Star Wars" - complete with light sabers (sp?) count?
PUPPETMAN
Understudy Joined: 12/28/07
#2re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 4:33pmI saw a touring company of ROMEO with an oriental lady playing Juliette. It was impossible to understand anything she said because of her accent. Really strange.The producers were listed as the National Shakespeare Company.
#3re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 8:57pmPersonally didn't see it, but I've heard of a production (I believe Macbeth.) where at the end of the scene the dead people would roll themselves off stage.
My avatar is a reminder to myself. I need lots of reminders...
Chrysanthemum62001
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/14/04
#4re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 9:14pmHmph. The recent production of Cymbeline at Lincoln Center. Lordy.
"What a mystery this world. One day you love them and the next day you want to kill them a thousand times over." The Masked Bandit in THE FALL
#5re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 9:24pmA production of Twelfth Night where all of the characters were singers or rock stars. Olivia was Madonna, Viola and Sebastian were Donny and Marie, and Orsino was Elvis.
Gothampc
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#6re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 9:49pm
Midsummer Night's Dream done as Dallas.
Hamlet jumps out of a grave, poses on the edge of the stage and delivers "To be or not to be" as a comic monologue.
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
#7re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 10:02pm
Measure for Measure set in the Wild West. With all original dialogue. and a lot of underscoring.
During Angelo's monologue, I swear to god he was going to break into song with all the underscoring building up under him.
<--- the set of A Midsummer Night's Dream that I was assistant stage manager for during the 2007 season at the STNJ outdoor stage.
-Dre- You must remember all the same that at the crux of every game is knowing when it's time to leave the table... And it's important to be artful in your exit. No turning back, you must accept the con is done... It was a ball, it was a blast. And it's a shame it couldn't last. But every chapter has to end, you must agree.
~Dirty Rotten Scoundrels~
There's a special kind of people known as show people. We live in a world full of dreams. Sometimes we're not too certain what's false and what's real. But we're seldom in doubt about what we feel.
~Curtains~
It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known.
~A Tale of Two Cities ~
~Dirty Rotten Scoundrels~
~Curtains~
~A Tale of Two Cities ~
#8re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 10:06pmI didn't see it personally, and I forget what Shakespeare play they did, but I know my friend's high school did when in the Spanish Soap Opera style.
karen24
Broadway Star Joined: 2/27/06
#9re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/9/08 at 11:45pmIn 1975, when I was in high school, my parents took me to a production of "King Lear" in Stratford, CT, in which all of the actors were wearing bearskins, furs, etc., and the set seemed extremely barren and dark. I'm pretty sure Morris Carnovsky was playing Lear. I couldn't stop focusing on the weird costumes, and the evening seemed ENDLESS. I think I read somewhere later that even for Lear, it was an extremely long evening. Maybe now I would appreciate it better, but at the time I could barely sit through it.
Maggie-the-schnoodle
#10re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/10/08 at 3:13pmShe's The Man
moonys_autumn
Stand-by Joined: 5/10/04
#11re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/10/08 at 5:24pmTwo Gentlemen of Verona... with a car chase. :)
If only you could know the things I long to say... if only I could tell you what I'm dieing to convey...
blaxx
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/05
#13re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/10/08 at 5:28pmAn all-lesbian Love's Labours Lost. Sounds good? It was awful.
Listen, I don't take my clothes off for anyone, even if it is "artistic". - JANICE
#14re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/11/08 at 3:02pm
I saw 'Hamlet' at York College a couple years ago. While Claudius was praying, a red laser-scope light started dancing around his face and settled on his forehead -- it was Hamlet in the back of the theatre with a rifle
And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wore awful flowered Bermuda shorts and sunglasses
(they were going for the whole 'time is out of joint' thing, and all the characters wore all different periods of clothes, to fit their characters. Claudius looked exactly like King Vitaman - the cereal)
It was wonderful
You don't go to the dragon without a present - Mark Rylance
Gothampc
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#15re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/11/08 at 3:06pm
"While Claudius was praying, a red laser-scope light started dancing around his face and settled on his forehead -- it was Hamlet in the back of the theatre with a rifle"
This made me laugh.
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
Borstalboy
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
#16re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/11/08 at 3:08pmWilliam Hurt's Oberon in James Lapine's 1982 Delacorte production of Midsummer. He looked hot as hell in his bare-chested fairy costume, but what the hell was he doing????? There are videos of this production floating around, you gotta see it. It also has a young Christine Baranski as the funniest Helena I have ever seen, Emmanuel Lewis as the Indian boy and a female Puck you want to beat with a lead pipe.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
#17re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/11/08 at 3:19pm
Firstly, I saw "The Taming of the Shrew" set in a bowling alley in Bakersfield, CA. Bianca was a cheerleader, Petruchio had a motorcycle and looked like Elvis, and everyone would break into (well, the sound system would break into) songs from the 50s and 60s (for example, "You Don't Own Me" for Kate).
I also saw a Reservoir Dogs-esque MacBeth, where everyone had guns and "mobster" accents, and the three witches were homeless women who climbed up a chain-link fence.
'"Contrairiwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."'
~Lewis Carroll
#18re: Strange and funny Shakespeare interpretations you've seen
Posted: 2/11/08 at 3:24pm
Obviously, Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr Abridged.
--and--
Much Ado About Nothing set in 1940's Cuba - very interesting yet cool
And you think of all of the things you've seen, and you wish that you could live in between ,and you're back again only different than before...
After the Sky.
-Into the Woods (Jack)
