tomorrow's topic will be easy, yay!
A bit late, but that's okay.
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Last fall I went to see the live (not really live) broadcast of the National Theatre's All's Well That Ends Well (which NEEDS to be released on DVD, OMG) and since then I have been particularly fond of Helena. I'd seen the play before, in the not-bad-at-all BBC production, but the NT's was really just spectacular, with Michelle Terry's Helena a red-cloaked heroine making her way through a slightly demented fairytale landscape (hence, of course, the red cloak).
I think the thing that's so compelling about Helena, as far as I'm concerned, is that she combines that kind of comedy-heroine pluck and resourcefulness -- I think she rivals Rosalind for Shakespearean heroine activity -- and intellect (she is, after all, basically a trained physician) with really, really questionable taste and low self-esteem. I mean, yes, she is a middle-class sort of person in love with an aristocrat, but even once she's got the approval of the King and the Countess for her marriage to Bertram, she assumes she's undeserving of him, even though he is an enormous prick and treats her like shit and I always find myself thinking it's the other way round, and yet, the bed trick is more than a little squicky, even more here than in Measure for Measure, because the sex the trick-ee thinks he's having is supposedly consensual rather than coercive. And then her reward is being married to Bertram and attempting to raise a kid with him (in the RNT production this is done beautifully; It's the sort of behavior that would call for about three interventions in real life, and yet in a play it's utterly fascinating -- I think too this is what I really like about the problem plays, the way they take apart the conventions of comedy, and won't let us escape the degree to which if things that happened in comedies happened in real life it would really suck. Even the NT's fairytale setting didn't change this -- given the cultural underpinnings of fairy tales, it underscored it instead.
Plus I just really really love the "bright particular star" speech. &hearts
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Last fall I went to see the live (not really live) broadcast of the National Theatre's All's Well That Ends Well (which NEEDS to be released on DVD, OMG) and since then I have been particularly fond of Helena. I'd seen the play before, in the not-bad-at-all BBC production, but the NT's was really just spectacular, with Michelle Terry's Helena a red-cloaked heroine making her way through a slightly demented fairytale landscape (hence, of course, the red cloak).
I think the thing that's so compelling about Helena, as far as I'm concerned, is that she combines that kind of comedy-heroine pluck and resourcefulness -- I think she rivals Rosalind for Shakespearean heroine activity -- and intellect (she is, after all, basically a trained physician) with really, really questionable taste and low self-esteem. I mean, yes, she is a middle-class sort of person in love with an aristocrat, but even once she's got the approval of the King and the Countess for her marriage to Bertram, she assumes she's undeserving of him, even though he is an enormous prick and treats her like shit and I always find myself thinking it's the other way round, and yet, the bed trick is more than a little squicky, even more here than in Measure for Measure, because the sex the trick-ee thinks he's having is supposedly consensual rather than coercive. And then her reward is being married to Bertram and attempting to raise a kid with him (in the RNT production this is done beautifully; It's the sort of behavior that would call for about three interventions in real life, and yet in a play it's utterly fascinating -- I think too this is what I really like about the problem plays, the way they take apart the conventions of comedy, and won't let us escape the degree to which if things that happened in comedies happened in real life it would really suck. Even the NT's fairytale setting didn't change this -- given the cultural underpinnings of fairy tales, it underscored it instead.
Plus I just really really love the "bright particular star" speech. &hearts
Day #1: Your favorite play
Day #2: Your favorite character
>Day #3: Your favorite hero
Day #4: Your favorite heroine
Day #5: Your favorite villain
Day #6: Your favorite villainess
Day #7: Your favorite clown
Day #8: Your favorite comedy
Day #9: Your favorite tragedy
Day #10: Your favorite history
Day #11: Your least favorite play
Day #12: Your favorite scene
Day #13: Your favorite romantic scene
Day #14: Your favorite fight scene
Day #15: The first play you read
Day #16: Your first play you saw
Day #17: Your favorite speech
Day #18: Your favorite dialogue
Day #19: Your favorite movie version of a play
Day #20: Your favorite movie adaptation of a play
Day #21: An overrated play
Day #22: An underrated play
Day #23: A role you've never played but would love to play
Day #24: An actor or actress you would love to see in a particular role
Day #25: Sooner or later, everyone has to choose: Hal or Falstaff?
Day #26: Your favorite couple
Day #27: Your favorite couplet
Day #28: Your favorite joke
Day #29: Your favorite sonnet
Day #30: Your favorite single line