the play is the thing
Feb. 15th, 2012 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deird1Shakespeare should always be performed rather than read.
Saw some friends perform As You Like It this evening. I can guarantee you - if I'd tried sitting down and reading that play, I wouldn't have got more than two pages in. But watching it? Fantastic! It's so hilarious!
Especially when the actors get the fact that Shakespeare's comedies were more "low burlesque" than "high opera".* They're silly, and should be treated as such. Whereas when people think "Shakespeare=formal" and try treating it solemnly and giving the most serious and staid performances of their lives... it just doesn't work.
* I have an entirely different rant ready about how opera is more low burlesque than high opera - but that would go against the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph, so I'll leave it for now.
Saw some friends perform As You Like It this evening. I can guarantee you - if I'd tried sitting down and reading that play, I wouldn't have got more than two pages in. But watching it? Fantastic! It's so hilarious!
Especially when the actors get the fact that Shakespeare's comedies were more "low burlesque" than "high opera".* They're silly, and should be treated as such. Whereas when people think "Shakespeare=formal" and try treating it solemnly and giving the most serious and staid performances of their lives... it just doesn't work.
* I have an entirely different rant ready about how opera is more low burlesque than high opera - but that would go against the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph, so I'll leave it for now.