Archives for 2008

I recently complained to a theater friend about a stage director that I’ve had the opportunity of observing at close range in recent months. I hesitate to call the guy a director, really. He spends entire rehearsals with his eyes stuck to the script and barely looks up to see what’s going on on stage. His direction basically revolves around saying things to the cast like “just get into a clump” and, with reference to a video recording he showed the ensemble of another company’s production of the same work, “do it like on the video.”

In response to my observations, my friend had an even more ludicrous director anecdote of his own to recall concerning an actress friend of his:

The actress, whom I shall call W, was in a production of a John Guare play a while back. In a run-through of the play near the end of the rehearsal process, the director of the production — let’s call her M — spent the entire first act furiously scribbling notes. Then, at some point during the second act, W looked into the stalls and noticed that M was slumped in her chair. The director had apparently fallen fast asleep.

No one, other than W, noticed what had happened, it seems. After the run-through was over, M, who had awoken at some point before the end, started going through her notes. She had plenty of things to say about the first act. When it came to the second act, M reported that she had no notes. W knew why this was of course, but the rest of the cast was elated: Even though they still had some work to do to hone the opening of the play, they were happy to have aced the middle. W, meanwhile, was too polite to point out the truth.

It was a refreshing anecdote. I guess the director I complained about at least deserves some praise for staying awake.

Short list of basic qualities for a director of theater productions:

1. He/She should stay awake throughout rehearsals including tech week and all run-throughs.
2. He/She should keep his eyes on the stage most if not all of the time.
3. He/She should actually direct the actors rather than giving vague advice based on third-party materials.

Magic is an artform about which I know practically nothing. I’ve enjoyed reading about it in novels like Glen David Gold’s Carter Beats the Devil, watching movies about it such as The Illusionist and experiencing magic shows on stage or TV, such as those by Penn and Teller and David Blaine.

One of the most lively evenings I’ve ever spent in the company of a magician was when I caught San Francisco performer Christian Cagigal‘s solo magic show, The Pandora Experiment at The Exit Theatre a while ago. (The latest iteration of the show is currently running at The Exit right now through August 16, in fact.)

A few days ago, I read a curious piece in The Boston Globe (via the ArtsJournal website) about the growing relationship between the seemingly disparate worlds of neuroscience and magic. Reporter Drake Bennett writes:

“In the past year, though, a few researchers have begun to realize that magic represents something more: a deep and untapped store of knowledge about the human mind. At a major conference last year in Las Vegas, in a scientific paper published last week and another due out this week, psychologists have argued that magicians, in their age-old quest for better ways to fool people, have been engaging in cutting-edge, if informal, research into how we see and comprehend the world around us. Just as studying the mechanisms of disease reveals the workings of our body’s defenses, these psychologists believe that studying the ways a talented magician can short-circuit our perceptual system will allow us to better grasp how the system is put together.”

I sent Cagigal a link to the story. Interestingly, he was not particularly impressed with what Bennett had to say, though he formulated a terrific response to the article which, with the author’s permission having been granted, I would like to share.

First off all, the magician finds it odd that scientists are only now cottoning on to the idea that magicians might have important insights into human behavior: “Funny. Until this report, I never once thought that everything I’ve been doing since I was a kid wouldn’t already be known to scientists. The first time I read an article on this subject, I thought to myself, ‘You mean to say that ‘they’ never knew that?!'”

Cagigal also took issue with the article in a couple of illuminating ways. He objected to the sentence, “Stage magic, after all, isn’t statecraft, but spectacle and entertainment.” While acknowledging that the assertion has been very true over the past 150 years (with but a few rarely known exceptions) Cagigal thinks that it’s time for magic to be seen in a new light. “I’ve been trying to fight this idea of magic in people’s minds but I’ve got a long road ahead of me.”

Cagigal took further umbrage at a quote from magician Raymond Teller (of Penn and Teller) which says: “The fundamental thing we do every day is ascertain what is reality, it’s this diagnosis of what the signals coming into our eyes are supposed to mean. We say, ‘That’s a fence, I must not walk into it,’ or, ‘Is that a car coming around the corner? How much can I see of it? Oh, no, it’s only a bicycle.'” About Teller’s opinion, Cagigal has this to say: “What draws people to magic, Teller believes, is an appreciation of how slippery that seemingly simple diagnosis can be.’They realize,’ Teller says in the story, ‘that the best way to grasp the power of deception is to do it themselves.’ I consider that middle statement to be a rather cynical point of view about magic. But, that is not surprising when you consider that we are talking about half of Penn and Teller. Their take has always been that of ‘These are all phony tricks.’ While that sentiment is still a important one to be aware of (that we are all being fooled at sometime or another) it’s driven by a deep seeded skepticism that has more to do with personal beliefs and issues and less to do with why anybody is attracted to magic.”

What I particularly love about Cagigal’s response to the Boston Globe article is how he uses it as a jumping point to talk about his personal philosophies about magic. “Some of us get into magic because we want to make magic!” he writes. “We love magic and magical things and giving people a world of magic to live in. If this wasn’t so important why would Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter be among the biggest movie franchises? And that’s to say nothing of Dungeons and Dragons and the multitude of fantasy genre entertainment and toys and clothes and stuff!”

Rounding off his passionate discussion, Cagigal wrote about a lecture he attended given by Eugene Burger, a respected magician (albeit lesser known to the public.) During the lecture, someone asked Burger, “Why in our day and age of faster, better, cooler technology do we still like magic and magic shows? Why do still pay money to see magic?” Burger’s answer, according to Cagigal, was simple: “Because the human heart cries out for magic.”

“Lets face it, that’s true,” Cagigal says. “I can’t really say why that’s true. That point can be analyzed for hours. Folks like Penn and Teller don’t seem to understand that. (Even though when Teller is left alone on stage to perform it’s the most beautiful magical stuff ever created. But, those moments are rare. Usually, Penn’s with him and it’s tricks and cynicism all the time.)”

“The worst cynics and skeptics are magicians,” says Cagigal by way of conclusion. “Funnily enough, I also think that cynics are nothing more than people who really want to believe in magic, they just don’t want to be fooled.”

I’ve long been aware of the impact that a performance venue can have on an audience. But it wasn’t until I saw two shows on two adjacent days in two very different venues by the same company that I realized just how differently audiences behave in contrasting settings.

Last week, I caught two of the four productions in Shakespeare Santa Cruz‘s summer season: Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. All’s Well was performed in the Glen — a magical and surprisingly intimate outdoor space framed by towering redwood trees. Burn This was produced in the Festival’s great indoor space, which also feels quite cozy despite its fairly generous 500+ seat size thanks to the gentle rake of the stadium seating around the apron stage. The audience for the Shakespeare was one of the most responsive I’ve ever seen at any production — indoor or outdoor. They cheered and whooped with delight in the comic scenes. They yelled out stuff like “oh no!” when Bertram rejected Helena. They clapped between scenes and generally made themselves very much part of the experience. Contrastingly, the Wilson crowd was much more subdued. They clapped only at the end of the entire play. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, it was so quiet.

I should start out by stating the obvious: In order to compare the impact of spaces properly, I would need to see the same — or at least very similar — plays produces in the two venues. Burn This is clearly a very different kind of theatrical experience than All’s Well. Yet in some ways the two works are comparable — they’re both pretty intense plays about human relationships, they’re both dark comedies, and the key characters in both dramas are complex and fully-rounded. Given that a large percentage of SSC’s audiences are subscribers and go to see most if not all of the four shows on the festival’s program, a comparison doesn’t seem completely spurious.

So why should the audiences respond in such polar ways? It’s hard to believe that the content and presentation of the plays themselves are responsible for this phenomenon. I have a hunch that the reactions of the crowd have more to do with the settings than anything else. If Burn This were performed in the Glen, amid those wonderful trees and with people lounging on blankets, munching snacks and drinking wine throughout, I think audiences would be much more vocal. Similarly, All’s Well would probably provoke less of an overt reaction if it were played under a lighting grid than a leafy canopy, with the audience sitting in regular rows of theatre seats without the snacks and drinks.

I’d be interested to find out if the experience I had at these two plays matches the one for audiences seeing the other two productions in SSC’s current season: Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Itamar Moses’ Bach at Leipzig. On a related theme — I wonder how contemporary plays like Moses’ and Wilson’s would play outdoors? Putting the Bard under the stars is the obvious thing to do. I wonder if the festival’s new artistic director Marco Barricelli will ever be bold enough to stage a newer work in the Glen and bring Shakespeare inside?

Those arts critics are an unscrupulous bunch. I should know — I should know: I’m a professional theatre reviewer.

It was interesting, therefore, to find myself at the receiving end of a review for the first time since I started working as an arts journalist. Last Saturday, my a cappella vocal ensemble, San Francisco Renaissance Voices, staged the opening night of our Indian dance and music-infused “fusion” take on Ordo Virtutum, a 12th century musical drama by the German Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. San Francisco Classical Voice sent a critic, Jason Victor Serinus, to review the show.

The review was kind of mixed: the critic didn’t much like our unorthodox approach to the material from a theological perspective: “While no Reader’s Digest summary can do justice to a complex belief system and way of life that embraces ideologies of reincarnation, karma, and spiritual liberation, it seems safe to say that Christianity and Hinduism offer different paths to God. Throw Celtic music, rooted in the pagan tradition of Goddess-based nature worship, into the mix, and you have a very confused spiritual cosmology that trivializes Hildegard’s faith.”

But Serinus seemed to enjoy the musicianship: “On a purely musical level, San Francisco Renaissance Voices excelled.”

I played the role of Anima, the soul who gets seduced by the Devil and then returns, repentant, to the true path. I don’t mean to sound like the universe revolves around me, but the fact that the critic didn’t have anything to say about my performance is a bit troubling. Failing to talk about Anima is a bit like writing a review of Hamlet without talking about the actor who played drama’s most famous Danish prince.

Makes me wonder. Very often, if I steer clear of talking about a key actor’s performance, particularly in a smallish production, it’s because I don’t have anything positive to say…

Anyway, I’m intrigued at how unfazed I’m feeling about the whole thing. I’m just happy to be part of the work. And what do I take away from the experience of being reviewed as a critic? The main thing, I think, is a greater awareness of how much people involved in a production care about what’s said about them — even if it’s just being said by some random guy in a local, online classical music publication. The sheer number of emails that have bounced around today between various members of my group is staggering. I always knew critics at the New York Times and The Guardian could influence productions. I didn’t think San Francisco Classical Voice would make such an impression.

This experience will, if nothing else, remind me of the power of words.

On Friday morning, during a trip to Santa Cruz to review a couple of shows in this year’s Shakespeare Santa Cruz festival, I found myself sitting at breakfast in the lovely waterfront B&B where I stayed overnight, chatting with a New York-based television producer about classical music.

The producer, whom I shall call D, is in the early stages of putting together a television documentary about classical music, specifically looking at the barriers preventing the wider reception of classical music in America today. D was in town to catch the opening night of the Cabrillo Contemporary Music Festival.

D is a big fan of Classical period composers. He especially loves Mozart. “I grew up with this music,” he said. D was feeling slightly apprehensive about attending the Cabrillo Festival, as in the past, he admitted, he had not gotten a lot out of contemporary classical music. “It doesn’t really have any melodies,” he told me over fresh scones and lemon preserves. “There’s nothing to hang on to.”

I thought it was interesting that someone planning on making a documentary about barriers preventing the wider reception of classical music should have this attitude. “I wonder if your feelings about contemporary classical music in some way reflect what many people say about classical music in general in this country?” I suggested. “I mean, you like Mozart because it’s wired into your system. You’ve been listening to the composer’s music all your life, so his melodies, rhythms and harmonic systems seem completely familiar and natural to you. If other people feel the same way about Mozart as you do about, say, John Cage, George Benjamin and Conlon Nancarrow, then perhaps that’s because they haven’t spent a lot of time with Mozart. As a result, his music sounds weird. They don’t understand it. Getting to grips with this ‘unusual’ sound would require a lot of effort, so it’s easier just to say they don’t like it and stick to stuff they know they do like, whether that be folk music, rap, hip-hop or whatever.”

D thought about this for a second and then said, “But you can’t compare your average pop song to a Mozart symphony or piano concerto. Pop music is generally very simple. Often it only employs three chords and has very straight forward repeated melodies. Whereas Mozart’s music is so sophisticated.”

I pushed my point further. “You know, about six months ago, I would have been inclined to agree with you,” I told D. I then went on to describe my experience of learning and performing Ordo Virtutum, a 12th century musical drama by Hildegard von Bingen composed in Germanic Latin plainchant, with my a cappella singing ensemble, San Francisco Renaissance Voices. “When I first received the score, I was completely put off by the music. It seemed like an incomprehensible jumble of notes to me. It had no hummable melodies, no rhythms to speak of and, being monophonic, no harmonies,” I explained. “But gradually, as I got comfortable with the music and started to learn it, I found that it started to take shape. After a few weeks, Hildegard’s formerly dull and inscrutable chants seemed like the most beautiful music in the world. All I needed was to take the time to immerse myself in it.”

The point I was trying to make to D is rather simple: People put up barriers to classical music (and many other art forms) not at the deepest level because they find it too complicated or elitist, but rather because they’re just not used to hearing it. If J. S. Bach’s Toccatas were constantly played on commercial radio stations and in shopping malls, people would inevitably soak up the composer’s sounds. After a while, they might actually dig it. Or at the very least, gain an understanding of how it works.

Thinking about this subject reminds me of the time I experienced my first — and, at this point in time, last — Chinese opera at Berkeley’s Cal Performances the year before last. The Peony Pavilion is regarded as a masterwork. But to me, it sounded like cats being strangled. If I were to listen to lots more Chinese opera, I’m certain the barriers would come down. I may not ever fall in love with this form of music. But I would doubtless be more inclined to stay open-minded and curious about it.

So I wonder if the answer to the barriers question is, at least in part, one of immersion? This is kind of obvious really. It all boils down to openness and education. Simply dismissing unfamiliar genres as “dumb”, “elitist” or whatever is all too easy.

I’m not sure what D made of my breakfast table tirade. I’m excited about his project anyway. I hope it comes off.

Everyone I’ve spoken to regarding Phyllida Lloyd’s movie adaptation of the irrepressibly perky ABBA musical, Mama Mia!, absolutely loathes the film. Anthony Lane’s scathing review in The New Yorker pretty much sums up the feelings of many other people I’ve talked with about the movie in recent weeks.

Yet as saccharine, badly filmed and poorly performed as it may be, the movie seems to be garnering wild praise from one particular section of society: women of a certain age. From my mother to the lady in the coffee shop down the road, to my vocal coach, female Baby Boomers are getting hot flushes over the musical.

This isn’t altogether surprising. We simply love to see ourselves — or a flattering projection of ourselves — reflected in the culture. Infused with catchy songs by the 70s supergroup and featuring a story about forthright, 50-something ladies living the good life, Mama Mia! easily appeals to the fantasies of this particular demographic. It matters not that Pierce Brosnan (in his most career-destroying role to date) can barely hold a note and that Meryl Streep looks like a dyspeptic giraffe in her knee-high silver-glittered platform-heeled boots. What matters is that the middle-aged female characters have all best lines not to mention the most sex in the film. And that Meryl and Pierce end up in the sack.

Should it bother us that cultural products like Mama Mia! have such narrow appeal? Certainly the film is not alone in alienating large numbers of people and pleasing few. Female Baby Boomers certainly are a powerful enough economic and social force to drive the movie’s box office. The film made the strongest debut of any musical on screen to date, box office-wise.

Demographics are a curious thing. The rules that govern how they work seem to have very little to do with the quality of the product.

There’s nothing quite like being in a show to teach an arts critic about what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.

Other than sitting in the middle of an orchestra or standing in the middle of a choir, it’s been years since I last trod the boards. I think I performed in my last play (a terrible Wooster and Jeeves comedy during my undergraduate years) in 1996, and last sang on stage when I was about 14 in the role of — hem hem — Peter Pan.

Now I find myself having to act, dance and sing — not to mention cope with three costume changes — in a production of Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum, a work which many scholars consider to be the oldest musical drama of its type in the western cannon.

Last night, I somehow made it through the dress rehearsal. Been losing sleep about opening night on Saturday. We’ll see what happens.

While I don’t think this experience will change the essentials of my work as an arts critic, it is certainly helping me to gain a different perspective on the creative process. The most interesting thing I’ve discovered is that putting on a show is, above anything else, an act of community. Ultimately, the end product, though I hope that it will be good, is kind of meaningless in comparison to the friendships I’ve made while working on this project and the bonds we’re forging both within our group and beyond.

I’ll certainly be interested to read what reviewers have to say about the show. But I can’t imagine it affecting me much. This is a comforting thought: I spend way too much time as a theatre reviewer worrying about how companies will respond to negative criticism. If the performers and production team are immersed in what they’re doing, they probably don’t care.

Then again, it is this cozy-feely-touchy introspection that causes problems for audiences. As a critic, I often wish that performers would stop reveling in their so-called “process” so much and pay attention to the people sitting out there in the stalls. It’s a delicate balance I guess.

There’s an idealistic belief in some parts of the media world (The New York Times, The New Yorker etc.) that critics should stay away from the people they write about. The grounds for this are simple: If a critic gets too chummy with an artist he or she can no longer maintain an “objective” stance while reviewing that person’s work.

The media landscape has changed so much over the past decade or so that that only very few media outlets can pretend to keep up this charade. With most newspapers and magazines either doing away with their arts writers altogether, or merging the reviewing and feature-writing functions into one job description, the “critical distance” proposition is becoming almost entirely untenable.

Instead of fretting about the “loss of objectivity” within the arts writing realm, I propose that the arts journalism community should take a different approach to dealing with the issue. Instead of shrinking away from the problem of interfacing with artists and then writing about them, I think critics should embrace the privilege of their new-found “insider knowledge” and challenge themselves to write with clarity, wit and understanding in spite of it all.

Objectivity is a sham anyway. Even those critics that wear hats and sunglasses when they go to a theatre and rush out during the applause still come to every arts experience with their internal prejudices.

We need to accept that the landscape is changing. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to harness the new reality to deliver smarter, deeper and more committed writing about the arts. We shouldn’t be afraid of getting our hands dirty while we’re at it. Writing less than positively in response to a piece of art when you’ve gotten to know an artist a little bit isn’t much fun. But if we do it well, and with compassion at our core, then I believe we’ve performed a valuable service for our readers and maybe, though it seems unlikely at first, even for the artists too.

Is there such a thing as an ideal arts blog post? And if so, what would this star of the spangled Internet firmament look like? Would it read like a diary entry or more like a newspaper or magazine article in terms of tone, reported content and style? Would it seek to offer an opinion or would it rather aim for impartiality? Would it be Talk of the Town-like or more along New Yorker feature lines in length?

These questions might seem idiotic, but they are worth thinking about for anyone who’s in this game.

I bring the matter up because even though the general consensus seems to be one of “anything and everything goes” on the Web, not all arts blog posts are created equal. Or, rather, even though they may be created equal, they don’t always receive the same reception.

I’ve always liked to mix things up as an arts blogger. Sometimes my pieces are 1000 words in length; sometimes they barely hit 250. On occasion the posts are reported; at other times they’re opinion pieces. More often they’re a combination of both. Sometimes I deal with serious matters and at other times I indulge myself in interesting trivia. On occasion I put myself in the middle of the post and write directly about my own experiences; and elsewhere I leave myself completely out of the equation.

What I love about blogging is the complete freedom I have to cover the arts in as broad a way as possible. The variety is what makes arts blogging so much more interesting, often, than what appears in the mainstream press.

But what I’ve noticed over the past 19 months since I started blogging is that certain kinds of blog posts — both my own offerings and those of fellow arts bloggers on the artsjournal site — tend to achieve a higher profile than others. It seems that “serious” blog posts that resemble traditional newspaper features and well-crafted opinion pieces seem to attract more attention from readers and are more likely to snag the front page on the artsjournal site than, say, confessional posts or posts that are lighter and perhaps more personal in style.

This is obviously a massive generalization. There are days when scant little witticisms eg the post I wrote a while back about Mike Leigh’s suspenders falling down, get quite a bit of attention, while more weighty and/or well-researched pieces about such topics as memory theory go seemingly unnoticed.

But if there really is a hierarchy, I wonder if the arts blogosphere will end up resembling traditional media? I hope not. It’s the never-know-what-you’re-getting aspect of culture blogging that keeps this form fresh.

I always thought roll-up pianos were a bit of a joke. I’d see pictures of them in those in-flight catalogues on domestic airplanes and wonder if anyone bought them, or if the people who bought them would also be likely to buy a set of foldaway, rubber golf clubs.

With its limp-looking plastic keyboard and (I supposed) tinny sound, I couldn’t imagine anyone, even a child, finding any practical use for a roll-up piano, besides, perhaps, using it to wrap around a bottle of white wine to keep it cool for a picnic.

Recently, though, I changed my mind about the object. Though I’m still not willing to go as far as to call it a musical instrument, I now see that it might be a very useful gadget to have around after all — especially for singers. My change of heart came a few weeks ago when I had the pleasure of interviewing American countertenor David Daniels for an article I was working on for the LA Times about memorizing music. I was asking Daniels about his techniques for learning singing roles and was startled to hear that Daniels works not at a polished grand piano when he’s in learning mode, but with none other than a roll-up keyboard.

“I do my best work with my little keyboard — my roll-up piano — sitting outside on my terrace in the outdoor air with a diet coke and a pencil and my score,” Daniels told me. “I look at the score, and look at the score again, and then walk around and sing the music from memory. I can’t stand being in the house in front of a piano. It’s too distracting. The roll-up keyboard is great for briefcases. It even plays chords.”

As someone who loves being mobile (I own one of the lightest laptops there is on the market today because I like to be able to work anywhere and not feel tied-down to an office) Daniels description of his learning process appeals to me greatly. The roll-up piano allows him to do his work wherever he wants. He sticks it in his suitcase whenever he goes away.

Of course, the roll-up keyboard is really only of use to singers and maybe some composers. I don’t suppose many other serious musicians, least of all pianists, would get much out of owning one.

By the end of my conversation with Daniels, I had decided to hock my clunky 40-pound Casio keyboard and buy one of these little roll-up numbers. “Where did you buy your roll-up?” I asked the countertenor before we signed off. “From Restoration Hardware,” Daniels said. “In fact, I bought three of them just in case one goes kaput.”

It’s easy to fall in love with Summer Shapiro. The 24-year-old, San Francisco-based clown not only conspired to make the entire audience fall at her feet during a solo performance of her show In the Boudoir at The Climate Theater on Saturday night. She also managed to get two random male theatergoers to fight with plastic swords, nunchucks and pistols on stage to win her affections — without doing much more than taking their hands, whispering a few quiet words to them and looking at them intently in the eyes. And all of this while rampaging around the tiny Climate stage in a frothy white hooped tutu and sparkly heels, throwing plates of cold spaghetti around and trying desperately to make an impression on — and be impressed by — the opposite sex.

In the Boudoir tells a deceptively simple story about a young female clown’s love life. When a date fails to show up to a candlelit dinner for two at the clown’s house, she compensates for her disappointment by engaging in elaborate romantic fantasies.

In once scene, she persuades a male theatergoer to join her on stage. Once on stage, she persuades the man to eat a piece of spaghetti with her as in the famous sequence from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. In another, she asks male audience members to blow up a yellow balloon for her, having failed at the task herself. The balloon gets stuck to her fingers while she tries to tie a knot in its end. Suddenly she drops her girlish facade and becomes Terminator-like monster-machine. Stomping about the stage making hydraulic noises like a malfunctioning Stepford Wife, she attempts to destroy the balloon under her heel. The image is at once hilarious, frightening and sexually bizarre. Veering erratically and erotically between the cliches of the helpless, ditzy female and the aggressive femme fatale, Shapiro both explodes stereotypes while making us recognize the universal desires for romantic passion within us all.

One of the most amazing things about Shapiro is her ability to connect with audience members. The whole ‘volunteer’ selection process and ensuing audience participation sequences are amazingly seamless and organic. Guys just seem to to submit to Shapiro’s will without looking embarrassed or shy; I thought they were plants, but the Climate’s artistic director assures me otherwise.

I’ve seen Shapiro perform once before. I was entranced enough by her ten-minute sketch last November to want to come back and see more. Half an hour of this masterful, sweetly-scathing performer simply isn’t enough, however. I can’t wait till she’s ready to give the world a full-length 90 minute show.

I’ve been engaged in a lively email discussion over the last few days with Robert Hurwitt, theatre critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, about how actors approach Shakespeare’s verse.

The debate was sparked by our very different reactions to British thespian (and 22-year Royal Shakespeare Company veteran) Roger Rees’ Shakespeare-infused solo show, What You Will.

Here’s an extract of what I wrote about Rees’ way of delivering Shakespeare’s verse in my review for SF Weekly (which won’t come out till next Wednesday):

“Rees has been living with Shakespeare’s language for so long, that he seems to forget that people need to decipher the words in order to keep up with him. The actor monotonously barrels his way through Hamlet’s soliloquies with little care for the iambic rhythm, coming across more like dog race commentator than a tragic hero. This misplaced casualness bleeds into other parts of the actor’s performance. Rees’ habit of peppering his speech with “uh”s and “uhm”s, is perhaps intended to make the Bard more approachable. But this tick mainly distracts.”

Hurwitt disagrees with me. He liked Rees’ delivery. Here’s an extract from his review, which appeared in the Chron a couple of days ago:

“The Shakespeare speeches (and one sonnet) are delivered with mastery…He more than does justice to speeches ranging from the “muse of fire” from “Henry V,” Macbeth’s dagger vision and Hamlet’s “To be” and “rogue and peasant slave” soliloquies (Rees holds the Stratford-Upon-Avon record for playing Hamlet) to both a smitten adolescent Romeo and garrulous old Nurse from “Romeo and Juliet.” But it’s the way he sets up these passages that distinguishes “Will” as much as his trippingly-on-the-tongue delivery.”

I guess we like our soliloquies delivered in different ways. Said Mr. H, in an email: “I thought there were wonderful subtleties and nuances and interesting interpretations in his speeches. And I rather like his way with the meter much better than the Peter Hall full-stop method.”

“I don’t much like Hall’s way of speaking Shakespeare either,” I responded. “I guess Rees and he are at opposite ends of the spectrum and to be honest I don’t think either approach works. I like my soliloquies to sound like poetry, but poetry that flows so organically that it almost sounds like a ‘conversation.'”

It’s a good thing that us critics don’t see eye to eye on everything. The world would be a dull place if we did.

In other news, a white-bearded Florida man by the name of Tom Grizzard just won an Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, a highlight of a festival that ended Sunday honoring the late Nobel Prize-winning author. Here’s a piece about the competition from USA Today.