Day Trip to Stratford

So, when I posted my 3-panel play summary of the Stratford Festival's 2015 season, I casually mentioned that I wasn't going to be seeing two of the plays and if anyone reading JUST HAPPENED to work for the Festival and JUST HAPPENED to be able to get me tickets to them, that would be great.

Well, their social media coordinator JUST HAPPENED to offer me tickets, which JUST HAPPENED to be awesome. I saw Anne Frank last month, but was then left with the dilemma of who would possibly be interested in accompanying me on what would be a one-day round trip to see Possible Worlds, a bizarre play about alternate realities and brains being stolen.

Fortunately I have an awesome co-worker who is gullible enough to be convinced to join me on my mad-cap theatrical adventures. Here is (more or less) how the day unfolded:

My co-worker is an enabler.

Actually, the border guard asked "What play are you seeing?" When I replied that we were seeing Possible Worlds, she said "Oh, that one." She waved us through before I could get a fuller report from her. 

Stratford has some great bookshops. If there wasn't so much great theatre going on, I would spend all my time there in the bookshops. We ended up going to The Book Stage, right across from the Studio Theatre.

Also, I should point out that my co-worker is a librarian and loves bookshops. I'm doing great violence to her character for the sake of comedy, but she's used to that. 

I had read up about Possible Worlds in order to write my 3-panel play summary of it, but the only thing I could find out about Stratford's current production was that it was going to be played with the stage flooded by two inches of water. 

I'll post a review of Possible Worlds next week, but I have to say that I actually really enjoyed the water. I was afraid it was going to be gimmicky and distracting, but it worked really well with the production's concept. 

Not pictured: my co-worker and I loudly singing show tunes as we drove to and from Stratford. I was actually more than a little hoarse by the time we returned home. 

In other news, I have finally launched my online store, the Good Tickle Brain Shoppe! I'm currently offering the following t-shirts, as well comic book compilations of my 3-panel plays and my Sound of Hamlet parody. Check it out!

Many thanks to my magnificently-bearded buddy Eric for agreeing to help me model my shirts. (Beard not included in shirt orders.)

An Egregiously Brief Overview of Original Pronunciation.

First of all, I apologize for this post being a bit late. I was JUST ABOUT to upload it when the internet at my house cut out. This should not have been a surprise, given all the various technical difficulties in the US yesterday...

Anyways... today's comic deals with one of the more interesting topics in contemporary Shakespeare studies: Original Pronunciation!

O.P. and the amazing ways in which it has been reconstructed deserve a lot more space than six stick-figure comic panels, but hey, barbarically reducing things of great literary and scholarly merit to their bare bones is kind of my "thing". At the very least, now you know that when Hamlet tries to rhyme "move" and "love", it's not actually him pretending to be mad. 

The super-linguist in question is David Crystal, whose praises I've repeatedly sung. In his O.P. endeavors he has been ably assisted by his son, Ben Crystal, an actor who, armed with Shakespeare's O.P., can make the prologue of Romeo and Juliet sound sexier and more piratical than you could have ever imagined. If you don't believe me, just take a listen:

Seriously. That's gorgeous. Here's a longer video, featuring Papa Crystal and Ben at the Globe:

It's easy to get snobbish about Shakespeare and to believe it works only when performed in the elegantly trained received pronunciation of an Ian McKellen or a Benedict Cumberbatch. But, as the Crystals point out, received pronunciation is even further away from Shakespeare's original accent than American accents are from it. 

Shakespeare can be performed in any accent. English, Welsh, Scottish, American, Canadian, Singaporean, I don't care. His words still have immense power. However, when you hear it spoken in O.P., you really get a sense of what it must have been like for those first groundlings at the first Globe Theatre.

Review of "The Diary of Anne Frank" at the Stratford Festival

I wrap up part one of my Stratford Festival reviews today. (Part two has to wait until I see the rest of the season later this summer.) 

The Diary of Anne Frank is a very atypical play for me to go see, in that it is (a) contemporary, (b) based on real events, and (c) definitely not a comedy. I don't tend to enjoy contemporary drama that takes itself seriously (such as Miller or Williams) because, by and large, I really don't enjoy watching people with issues be terrible to each other. I enjoy Shakespeare plays about people with issues being terrible to each other because the distance of time and place and culture somehow dulls the edge.  But contemporary family dramas involving overwrought parent-child relationships? No. Not really my cup of tea. I'd rather, you know, have fun instead.

When my family couldn't fit Anne Frank into our annual Stratford binge, I  wasn't terribly sad about it, but something niggled at the back of my mind. "I really ought to see this," I thought. So when the Stratford Festival generously offered to provide me with a pair of tickets, I decided to take the plunge. (I hasten to note that my review is not influenced by the acceptance of said free tickets - if I didn't like the show I would have just never mentioned I had seen it in the first place.)

I really can't speak highly enough of director Jillian Keiley's decision to break the fourth wall right at the start by having the actors directly address the audience as themselves, not as their characters. As someone who is pathologically self-analytical in a theatrical situation, I tend to wall up when I feel a production is trying TOO HARD to elicit a particular emotion from me. By having the actors disarmingly introduce themselves and the characters they played, Keiley was very sneakily able to circumvent this tendency of mine.

You go into a production of Anne Frank expecting it to be sad, and it is invariably sad. It is to this cast's credit that this production was not uniformly colored with sadness and fear and poignancy, but instead had all the shades of emotion one would expect in a real teenaged girl's life: humor, laughter, frustration, brattiness, rebelliousness, annoyance, love, etc. 

Was this fun? No. But not everything has to be fun all the time, and I'm glad I saw it.

If Shakespeare had written... Jurassic World

If you haven't seen Jurassic World, this comic probably won't make a lot of sense. Sorry.

If you have seen Jurassic World, this comic probably still won't make a lot of sense. Sorry.

SPOILERS. 

While there are many things wrong with Jurassic World, I think Indominus Rex's story is positively Shakespearean. Held captive for her entire life, murders her sister, escapes and attempts to seize control of island, convinces those dedicated to hunting her down to join forces with her against a common enemy, ultimately betrayed by those she trusts and dragged to a watery doom...

Jurassic World - the dinosaur's version of a Shakespearean history play. 

Review of "Hamlet" at the Stratford Festival

Last week I reviewed Pericles, the first Shakespeare play of my Stratford Festival season. Today I'm turning my attention towards their production of Hamlet. 

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a particularly critical person and am not always good at analyzing or articulating my reaction to a show. At the intermission of Hamlet I was wondering vaguely what was wrong with me, as the show I had seen was doing everything right (as far as I could tell) and yet somehow was not pulling me in. I still don't know why that was, but I do know that the second act redeemed all that.

Confession: I've had an actor-crush on Jonathan Goad ever since I saw him as Hotspur in Henry IV, part 1 at the Stratford Festival many years ago. Like all Hotspurs, he had a manic energy and dangerous edge, but he also had the charisma and competency that many Hotspurs seem to lack - all qualities that he also brought to his Hamlet.

Again, as is usual at Stratford, the supporting cast members were all uniformly excellent. I particularly enjoyed Geraint Wyn Davies's Claudius, whose brief moments of villainous plotting were all the more alarming for how charming and reasonable he seemed most of the time, and for Adrienne Gould's mad scene as Ophelia, which definitely ranks as one of the more unsettling ones that I've seen.

When you inject this much energy into a production, it is sometimes possible for things to get lost in the hustle and bustle. It is to director Antoni Cimolino's credit that this Hamlet, despite being physically lively and fast-paced, is also accessible, comprehensible, and, most importantly, entertaining.

Review of "Pericles" at the Stratford Festival

OK, I'm trying something a bit different today... a review! I love going to the theatre, but I've never written actual reviews of the productions I've seen. Mostly this is because I am a terrible reviewer. I'm fairly easy to please and without any of the critical discretion of more seasoned reviewers. I'm also very soft-hearted, so if I didn't enjoy a production I am more likely to pretend I never saw it in the first place rather than say anything negative about it. But let's give it a try! The guinea pig I have selected is the first show that I saw at the Stratford Festival this season.... Pericles!

Now, the gentleman I was sitting next to might just be overly full of joie de vivre, but to have someone who, at the beginning of the show asked me "is the language in this play the sort of Shakespeare language you have to translate constantly in your head?", turn around at the end and say "That was terrific, everyone should see this!" is quite a positive testimonial. Especially because this was Pericles. And, let's face it, Pericles is nowhere near one of Shakespeare's more accessible plays. 

The only other time I've seen Pericles was again at the Stratford Festival, about twelve years ago. That was a decent production too, but this one was definitely cleaner, much easier to follow, and more stylistically cohesive. As I always say, I'm fairly frivolous and can get quite impatient with directorial Concepts (with a capital C) but in this case the Victorian concept definitely served the play, as opposed to being imposed upon it. I particularly enjoyed the double-casting (which I enjoy anyways, but which actively enriched the production in this case.)

I really don't need to say that the acting and the language-speaking were superb, because that's almost always the case at Stratford. Special mention to Deborah Hay, whose gigantic brimming limpid eyes in the already emotionally-fraught reunion scene managed to sneak through the chinks in my fairly robust emotional armor. 

Pericles isn't performed all that often, so, if you can, take an opportunity to see this production. (If you're on the other side of the continent, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is also mounting a production this season, and so you should totally see that one and then tell me how it is.)

Kids Read Comics Convention

I've been plastering this all over social media, but forgot to re-mention it here! This week, June 20-21, is the Kids Read Comics Convention in Michigan! Specifically, it's at the Ann Arbor District Library. I will be there both Saturday and Sunday, from 12pm to 6:00pm, selling a variety of Good Tickle Brain merchandise, including t-shirts! Here's a sneak peek and some of the stuff I'll be presenting:

If you're in the Southeastern Michigan area, stop by and say hello! I'm a very nice person and would love to chat with you, so don't be shy. If you're NOT in the Southeastern Michigan area, don't worry! In a couple weeks (hopefully, tech gods and my own limited intellect permitting) I will be launching my online store and you'll be able to order shirts and other merchandise there.

Hope to see some of you there!