(Untitled)

[lady_morgaine]

After standing in line from 7:00am until 1:30pm, and then returning at 6:30pm and waiting until 7:30pm, I finally got Chris and myself (free) tickets to see the final performance of Macbeth in Central Park at the Delacorte Theatre. Liev Schreiber of "The Manchurian Candidate" and Jennifer Ehle of A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" were both in it, and I

Comments

[rachel2205]

I liked reading this. I always enjoy theatre reviews! And I agree - plays that try to make Shakespeare (etc) "current" or "relevant" often fail. Shakespeare works for us because so many of his themes are timeless; dressing his plays up in silly clothes doesn't make his stories more "now". I think often more parallels to our own political world can be drawn from a classically staged Shakespeare than from a self-consciously arty version of the same play.

[lady_morgaine]

It's one of my biggest pet peeves - in our utilitarian world, it seems, we can't simply enjoy art because it's beautiful or because it has value in and of itself. We always have to impose "meaning" or "relevance" or something on it to make it worthwhile, and it drives me nuts, because that's not what art is. We've lost the ability to enjoy beauty for its own sake - ars gratia artis, as they say.

I've enjoyed reading about the York Mystery Plays too! They sound really fabulous - I'm glad they revitalized them! I wish I could see something like that! :)

[daysprings]

Here's a fairly positive review of the production in the New Yorker. I'm glad you were able to see Macbeth! And for free, too - envy, envy.

I grew up being completely spoiled by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and I love to see the bard's works performed live. Even sub-par productions at Hopkins, for heaven's sake. How could you ever get enough?

[lady_morgaine]

Thanks for the link to the review! It cleared up a few things for me. I think, now that I've read it, that one of the reasons Lady Macbeth's descent into madness and despair in this performance ended up seeming so sudden and abrupt was the very fact that Kaufman turned Macbeth into a little boy crawling behind his wife's skirts - Lady Macbeth was so strong and impenetrable that it seemed almost strange that she would crack at the end.

The contrast between appearance and reality, as both reviewers pointed out, was really well-done in this performance - as Als pointed out, Lady Macbeth looking like the prim and proper suburban wife made her inner corruption all that more haunting. I hadn't thought before of seeing the Macbeths as a "fractured political family", but it's an intriguing idea. Perhaps I'm revealing too many of my biases here, but instead of Nancy Reagan perhaps I'd say they looked a little more like Bill and Hillary to me. :)

Although I'm not much of a "gender studies" person myself, the gender issues raised in

[lastremnant]

if a work of art is truly classic, then no relevance has to be imposed upon it to make it beautiful or meaningful or worthwhile.

I totally agree.:) I am not really comfortable when people try to impose an agenda through art, especially when they twist something classic (or especially this goes for "historical" movies, theatre, tv such as the "JFK" movie) to fit their own whims.

I have noticed that theatre companies (including the one I worked at a few years ago) are starting to tweak the classics more and more (like you mentioned with the director setting it during WW2) as they feel they need an "edge" to get the audience's interest. They think they need something new or unique to attract a larger audience. And I think, in some prideful way, they want to try to make the play "their own" instead of Shakespeare's.