As I Really Liked It

Okay, so this post will basically be a review of the two plays I've seen this week. I'm going out of order and reviewing As You Like It first, since that's freshest on my mind.

I saw it at the Globe last night, and I forgot to bring my camera so there are no pictures save the one from my ferry trip last week. But rest assured, I will bring my camera next time. But as for picturing it, the Globe basically fits all the description of it, and it looks (if I remember correctly) exactly as it was portrayed in Shakespeare in Love a few years ago. The stage juts into the crowd standing in the pit, with entrances at the back and leading down catwalks right into the crowd.
This isn't my picture, and I don't like it since it doesn't have the catwalks that would be coming towards the crowd on the left and right, but it gives you an idea. I was on the second tier, on the right.

It was this detail that captivated me most, because for all the times I had heard of how the stage juts forward, I never understood why that was important. But what it means is that the players can engage in a level of audience interaction that was wonderful to watch. Jacques soliloquizing on a wall near the entrance of the theater, Orlando and Charles' wrestling match being played out in the crowd, Orlando throwing his love poems around the pit while more rained from the ceiling; truly, Shakespeare was meant to be performed at this theater. And the performances were, of course, wonderful, with the actors truly really bringing an energy and happiness to what is, after all, a very happy play. It even ended with a Slumdog Millionaire-type Bollywood dance after the traditional courtly dance at the end.

My favorite part, and this is out of many choices, was undoubtedly Jacques' speech which begins "All the world's a stage..." It was done as the other actors were gathered around a fire in the middle of the stage, the flickering light playing off the faces of those in the pit as night gathered above created this almost...holy atmosphere. As he spoke, there was an almost tangible reverence by the audience, and a silence so complete you could hear the wood snapping and crackling in the fire. And his delivery was mesmerizing, and not cliched at all; he even found appropriate members of the audience to point to as he narrated Shakespeare's players in life: the puking infant, sunny-faced schoolboy, bearded soldier, etc. After it was over the audience applauded for a long time, and I think he deserved it.

But as I said, many favorite moments. In particular, the guy playing Touchstone truly inhabited the character of the clown, even coming out at intermission and dancing. Throughout the play he was constantly having little reactions to the other characters, and at one point, as a plane passed by overhead, he began looking up fearfully. The woman playing Rosalind did this as well, since a particularly loud plane passed by right before her famous line, "Love is merely a madness." She paused, and her and the other actors looked upward for a moment and waited for it to pass while the audience laughed. I don't want to give the impression it was informal, but part of the magic is the self-awareness that Shakespeare wrote into the play, the fact that this play was meant to deeply involve the audience. That's something you can't intuit from just reading it.

Anyway, I've ranted enough, and suffice it to say I enjoyed this play much more seeing it than reading it. I've seen pretty good performances of Shakespeare before, but seeing it at the Globe is, as I said, an almost religious experience. It makes me fully appreciate how brilliant the guy was.

The other play, Arcadia, I saw on Monday night, and it too was very good. It's a Tom Stoppard play involving two story lines: one in the early 19th century with a tutor, Septimus, and his pupil, and one in modern times involving two scholars investigating them. It was full of references to romanticism and existential futility and it had good humor too. Sidenote: the girl playing the pupil was Lavendar Brown in Half Blood Prince this summer. The characters are kind of similar, so I thought it was funny. Anyway, it was an interesting exploration of the universe and mathematics and the Enlightenment, and it had a half-happy ending. I can't muster up the same enthusiasm I had for Shakespeare, but that's not to suggest I didn't like it as much. There's just not as much to say; go see it yourself!

I will have ample photos tomorrow, since I'm going to Southward. And I promise to have pictures of the Glove next time, I really regretted not being able to show you the stage in all its wonder for myself.