Awe kinds of allsomeness

[ritaxis]

I think I may know somebody who is a kinkajou. I only know this person through online correspondence, though, so I'm reluctant to say so for sure.

So we went to the Shakespeare Santa Cruz production of The Tempest last night, thanks to the comps awesome Emma got us on ridiculously short notice, and in the middle of horrible stress and we thank you, kiddo. I just now figured out what the costume and set theme for this was: Marx Brothers movies! The goddesses were dressed up as Margaret Dumont -- and, for more awesomeness -- Miranda was played as if she was a Margaret Dumont character! And all the regular human guys were wearing those weird 30's resort suits with sashes sporting County Fair ribbons on them.

Okay, I figured that out. Now, here are some questions:

-- the dialog keeps insisting that Caliban is ugly. How come he's always played by strikingly handsome men?

-- WTF happens to Caliban at the end of the play? It's not enough to be forgiven by that (excuse me) prick Prospero.

-- What's going on when Ariel asks Prospero if he loves him and Prospero doesn't answer?

-- Is Prospero supposed to act like somebody's pulling behavior prompts out of a hat and reading them into his head? Because his arc doesn't make sense unless we admit that he, unlike everyone else in the play except maybe Trinculo, is a toon. Trinculo was played as a toon, but he could have been played as a jester too, and it would have been just as funny.

-- Ariel totally looked like Harpo Marx, stood like Harpo Marx, stared at people like Harpo Marx, and used music like Harpo Marx. I know, that's not a question. But it fits anyway.

My current "bloated and feeling fat" weight is the same as the "oh my dog have I really lost that much or am I just dehydrated" weight I had a couple of weeks ago. But that means only a couple of pounds lost in that time, so I shouldn't be too excited.

Yesterday the baby who scoots around backwards and upside down got himself into a sitting position stuck rigidly on his hands several times, but he did not appreciate the awesomeness of this because once in that position he could not move. So he screamed about it all day.

I'm going to do a Life on the Central Coast soon, maybe tomorrow, because I have saved up for you: shark attacks, town-gown water wars, elusive spinach salmonella, improbable bicycle accidents in the forest, traffic, begonias, boutique fruit . . . but right now (1) I'm sleepy and (2) I have work to do.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

the dialog keeps insisting that Caliban is ugly. How come he's always played by strikingly handsome men?

Richard III syndrome?

WTF happens to Caliban at the end of the play?

Whatever the director wants. Harold Bloom thinks he goes back to Italy with the rest of the cast to continue his education, but Harold Bloom is a lunatic.

(One of the better Tempests I've seen ended with Caliban alone onstage with a sort of "well, now what?" look, which made me kind of sad.)

What's going on when Ariel asks Prospero if he loves him and Prospero doesn't answer?

He does in the full text! Just, you know, sort of quickly and awkwardly.

Also, I admit that I cannot picture a Marx Brothers Tempest, and this is possibly for the best.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Hah! I knew you'd answer. I was thinking about you all night.

And I should have known Richard would be in the answer!

Well, he did go on and on in the production -- I think SSC doesn't cut the lines particularly -- but there just wasn't an answer in his answer.

The more I think about it the more I think it was indeed a Marx Brothers Tempest and that it was better for it.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Yay! I like when people I haven't even met face-to-face are thinking of me. :D

Also, does it count if the Richard I'm talking about isn't the one I'm usually talking about? ;)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

does it count if the Richard I'm talking about isn't the one I'm usually talking about?

It totally does, because it allows me to ignore Roman numerals! But I should have said "I should have known that it would involve some Richard or another," just to be precise.

WTF happens to Caliban at the end of the play?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Well, in A Midsummer Tempest, which I am astonished to discover is out of print, Poul Anderson has Caliban surviving on the island. Tempest is a charming book, with IIRC all the dialog written in iambic pentameter, and it was Anderson's favorite of his works--I recommend it, or at least my past self does; I haven't reread it in a long time.

[pameladean]

Mike Ford wrote a poem called "Third Thoughts" that discusses the fates of Prospero, Ferdinance and Miranda, and Caliban. Caliban is King of the island. I am not sure if it's in print anywhere, but I could check. Once I'd read it, I couldn't really contemplate any other outcome.

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure it's in Heat of Fusion. I can't check right now because it's in the bedroom and rysmiel is asleep in there, but it's not in From the End of the Twentieth Century and I know I've read it.

Auden also wrote a poem about what happens after the end of the Tempest, called "The Sea and the Mirror".

I've seen Caliban done ugly. I've seen him with a turtle shell, and I've seen him made up and dressed green and froggy. I've also seen him black with all the rest of the cast white, which worried me because if it's meant to be an allegory of colonialism that's kind of peculiar and doesn't quite work.

In a production I saw a couple of years ago, Prospero apologises to the audience, and when he's drowning his book and tearing things down, before that, he tears down all the gauze cloths that have been set, and leaves you looking out of the back of the theatre through a glass window where there are cars and things.

The more I have thought about this, the more I want to stage a production of The Tempest which starts with Prospero and the small child Miranda cast out of Milan into the boat, and there is a storm and the whole island and all the preposterous plot is in Prospero's imagination, or the story he tells to Miranda as the boat sinks.

[pameladean]

That would be effective but terribly grim and awful; far too much like the end of "Shakespeare in Love." Brrrrr.

It is a pretty weird play. I always just think of Prospero as a blocked writer, though.

P.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I liked the ending of "Shakespeare in Love!" I thought she got to have her cake and eat it too. The guy she marries turns out not to be a jerk, after all, and her affair with Shakespeare is this pretty little thing she gets to carry around all her life (the icing on the cake).

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

It's in Heat of Fusion.

[pameladean]

Thanks! Jo thought so too. I only recently got a copy, and I knew I'd read everything in it but not what it all was.

P.