i panicked when i heard that anne hathaway had signed on for this summer's shakespeare in the park. miss devil-wears-prada-and-princess diaries* in the comedy (twelfth night) that functions as a sequel to shakespeare in love** - and, once again, we'd be in california for a week of the show's run? man, we'd never get tickets. i continue to have great luck in shitty weather, though, and we made it through the virtual line on our first try (last thursday, the night after the elvis costello concert). i grabbed umbrellas and wine from the apartment after work, met joe uptown, and boom, shakespeare for us.
as a summer-in-the-city (especially this-stormy-summer-in-the-city) show, twelfth night has much to recommend it: it's not a midsummer night's dream,*** it's heavy on the cross-dressing and the singing, and it sends you from the theater with a marvelous and memorable "hey, ho, the wind and the rain" faux downer (feste's "when that i was and a tiny little boy;" david pittu killed it as feste, and i'm now very sorry i didn't see him in stoppard's coast of utopia). anne hathaway's voice is just as lovely as it was when she sang with hugh jackman at the academy awards this year, and her physical (stage combat for laughs, a-hath: who knew you had it in you?) and vocal (not verbal, vocal; she plays the his-and-hers role well) comedy is quite good; we were seated too far away to catch many of her facial expressions, alas, so her softer moments as viola fell a bit flat. hamish linklater as sir andrew aguecheek and jay o. sanders as sir toby belch had a didi-and-gogo, rosencrantz-and-guildenstern chemistry that played wonderfully; audra "four-time-tony-winning" mcdonald was a formidable olivia and needs to stop hiding her light under the bushel basket that is abc's private practice; hem, the brooklyn folk-rock types who played the show's original score onstage, pleased me considerably more than folk-rock types generally do. of the four shows i've seen at the delacorte (midsummer in '07, hamlet and hair last year), this was easily my favorite. LMO + 12th 4ever.
*and rachel getting married, of course, but i was thinking of films that would draw non-regulars to the shakespeare lines.
**a convoluted draw, but whatever, i was feeling vulnerable.
***nothing but love for midsummer, but we need some time apart. it has grown common to me.
6 comments:
I'm a Hamish Linklater fan from way back ;)
Yuck what's with the emoticons :X
i know, gross, right? haloscan and i have had words about those. we have also had words about how i receive comment alerts but have to guess which entry received a comment.
in retrospect, ripping all of blogger's code out of my site template eight years ago was not a good idea. i'd like normal comments. and, you know, to be able to tag stuff.
My dear, you should talk to me about normal comments and being able to tag stuff. But maybe, er, after I'm married.
Twelfth Night is my favorite of the comedies too.... lucky you!
@P: i'd love to meet the person who has, like, an especial love for the two gentlemen of verona (though i'm sure they're out there, and probably go to my gym, now that i think about it).
less than two weeks 'til you get hitched, son! aiee!
My favorite of the comedies is Measure for Measure. Close enough? (The one production of TGV I've seen, at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, was not very convincing.)
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