Friday Post-Show Back Driving to Work Random 16

[collisionwork]

So we closed Ian W. Hill's Hamlet last night. It was a great show. We did really well. We had one more reviewer show up, and the show was really on, so if they don't like it, whatever. We did good, and lots of strangers from the large house came up to me after to thank me and talk to me, which was real good for the ego-boo.


And now, I'm back at The Brick, supervising the tech for Yudkowski Returns!. So I had to be here at 10 am, and also sweep and mop the space up before the company came in, I'm tired and worn out, but all is well. Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be able to get out of here to go see the space for the Suzan-Lori Parks 365 Days plays that I'm directing on July 14-15. Berit should be there, so hopefully I can have it described in detail. Wheee.


Anyway, had the iPod on in the car on the way over here this morning, and out of the now 21,121 songs in there, here's what came up:


1. "The Girl from Baltimore" - The Fleshtones - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996
2. "Birth3" - Racy Tune Clamp (John Oswald redoes The Beatles) - 69 Plunderphonics 96
3. "Raw Power" - Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power
4. "The Toy Trumpet (electronic version)" - Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research, Inc.
5. "Breaking Bells (Take Me to the Mardi Gras) - Crash Crew - The Sugar Hill Story: To the Beat Y'All
6. "All of Your Love" - Magic Sam - Essential Blues
7. "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)" - The Seeds - Retrospective. . .
8. "Afternoon" - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
9. "Broken Blossoms" - Dusty Springfield - Dusty Volume 2
10. "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" - Jackie De Shannon - The Definite Collection
11. "I Can't Stop Loving You" - Elmore James - Chicago Slide Guitar Masters from Tampa Red to Elmore James
12. "Here Come the Martian Martians - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - The Best of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
13. "Spit of Love" - Bonnie Raitt - Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music
14. "Please Don't Leave Me" - Fats Domino - Back to the 50s 05
15. "Nattsteg" - Bruset - Radio Aktiv 7"
16. "Finale" - Ennio Morricone - Once Upon a Time in the West


Okay, now I'm scheduled here until 6 pm. I'd love to go home then, but the last performance of the show by Jon Stancato and Stolen Chair is up tonight here at 7 pm. And I should see it. {sigh} I'm really tired. I have tomorrow off, all day, so I can rest then, I guess. And work on the casting for the 365 Plays things and the four August shows.

No cat photos today, I think. I'm not sure I have any more good ones that I haven't posted . . .

Comments

The badder Hamlet

[adam-mcgovern.livejournal.com]

Once again, thanks for the bravery of an unlikable Hamlet -- I’ve never seen the character portrayed so much as a collaborator with his own misfortune. This fits well with a modern perspective on the concluding bloodbath being a self-made rather than star-crossed tragedy. Typically, the only thing that gives this guignol meaning for me is to overlay a feminist reading whereby every wrong turn is taken by walking away from a feminine “frailty”; but through what is also the least androgynous Hamlet performance I’ve ever seen, this is suitably accentuated in absentia, and the meaningless becomes the point. Long before that Bard-in-Basra ending, deft dramatic emphases had well portrayed the fetishization of personal spleen and honor without purpose, from Hamlet to Laertes to our current unworthy scion and his corporate court. The courageous bodkin-ing of “To be or not to be” gives a whole new perspective on Hamlet’s other suicidal protestations as manipulative exhibitionism, and the paring of scenes with Ophelia (if memory serves) makes all his proclamations of love for her a hollow echo of his one true narcissistic attachment (even in this version he is, after all, the one he talks to most :-)). The psychological conception of the ghost was inspired, not as any visible phantom but some solidified word both incarnating and instigating Hamlet’s consuming obsession, a bullet ricocheting out of his own skull. Loved Jerry Marsini’s football-captain Claudius, Bryan Enk’s clammy Scooter Libby Polonius, and the grand obligation and shallow understanding of Stacia French’s Gertrude. A sour prince whose story left a good taste (trippingly?) on the tongue.

Re: The badder Hamlet

[collisionwork]

Thank you so much for the appreciation, Adam, and especially for the fine phrase "solidified word," which is indeed a great way to put into form the abstract concept bouncing around my skull of the Ghost's appearance. I have to remember that for use in direction in the future.

Re: The badder Hamlet

[adam-mcgovern.livejournal.com]

Glad ya liked what I liked; if the production rematerializes this may well incarnate as a review somewhere too -- and I hope my encomia for Ian the dramaturge didn't obscure my enjoyment of Ian the actor; a great, hysterical yet controlling take, like a domineering Woody Allen; it's funny how contemporary and comparatively (to the Middle Ages) affluent audiences tend to identify with the royalty in these plays since the human truths are so widely applicable, but this often loses sight of the entitlement-anxiety, not legitimate grievance, the arrested-teen prince is suffering from. Your portrayal was a great incision through the centuries of grandeur-accretion to see the play and the role not so much afresh as for what they really are.