a_t_rain

So, I'm still not dead! And I went away to New York for the weekend mid-semester, which is something I apparently haven't done since 2011, but should really do more often. I saw the Red Bull production of Webster's The White Devil on Saturday afternoon, which was clever and interesting and in a nice, intimate little theater in Greenwich Village, and I was kind of tempted afterward to skip King Lear and see it again in the evening, on the grounds that I'd seen lots of Lears and who knows when I'm going to get to see The White Devil again.

That would have been a bad, bad mistake.

( King Lear at the Cort Theater, performance spoilers )

So I went to London last weekend, for about thirty hours or so, and saw three plays, 'cos I don't mess around. Performance spoilers abound, also some gruesomeness.

( King Lear, National Theatre )

( Omeros, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse )

( Titus Andronicus, The Globe )

I'm still trying to sort out what I think about this production; I guess the best way of putting it is that I loved it, but I'm still trying to decide whether I liked it. Merchant is one of those plays for which I have a particular soft spot, and therefore strong opinions, so I have a hard time telling the difference between "interesting choice, different from what I would have done but still valid" and "at odds with what's actually in the text," and I generally prefer a reading that's less dark than this production was. I mean, all of the major characters (other than Nerissa and maybe Lorenzo) are people who do deeply horrible things, but that's not all they are, and I see Act 5, in particular, as being about them groping, however clumsily, toward getting it right. And this production seemed to shut the door on a lot of those redemptive possibilities (especially, all three of the romantic relationships seemed to be irreparably broken), and I'm not sure that works, structurally.

That said, this was an incredibly powerful production, and I left the theater feeling raw and drained in the way that only really great art can make you feel, so nitpicking seems churlish.

( Performance notes )

Will do a proper travelogue / photo post later; this one is for the Shakespeare geeks. This will definitely be a quick-impressions post rather than a formal-review post, since I'm not much good at the latter, but I figured at least some of you would be interested.

( The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's Globe touring production, 5/29/09 )

( Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe, 6/10/09 )

( All's Well That Ends Well, Royal National Theatre, 6/10/09 )

( As You Like It, Shakespeare's Globe, 6/11/09 )