That Was The Week...
Here's a summary of Shakespeare news for the week from around the world.
1. Make It Bleed
The Royal Shakespeare Company is currently performing BOTH history tetralogies at their home in Stratford. The Production will be moving to London's Roadhouse on April 1. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune the cycle takes 1,389 minutes to perform. The plays, of course, are Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, and Richard III; in traditional historic chronology, but reversed in order of composition. According to Pam Kent's article in the Tribune:
"Such a major undertaking produces some fascinating facts and figures: Across the 8 productions 34 actors play 264 parts, each part is understudied, which means a total of 528 parts have been rehearsed. Each actor plays and understudies around 15 parts each. Between them they have learned roughly 210,000 words. 800 costumes are required and over 40 wigs and hairpieces. In all over fifteen liters of stage blood is needed – it’s made from glucose and ice-cream colouring. Stop reading now if you are squeamish. The special blood effects are produced with tubes blocked with mortician’s wax and attached to colostomy bags. When the desired effect is required the actor squeezes the bag to break the seal."
It's a bloody, bloody business...
2. OSF Kaleidoscopic
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival opened its 2008 season this week. Shakespeare on the bill is A Midsummer Night's Dream (2/15 - 11/2), Coriolanus (3/26 - 11/2), Othello (6/4 - 10/11) and The Comedy of Errors (6/5 - 10/12). Non-Shakespearean productions will include Our Town, A View from the Bridge, August Wilson's Fences, and The Clay Cart. It's a tremendous lineup scheduled by new artistic director Bill Rausch. There is a get-to-know-you interview in a story on this year's seaon in the Seattle Times worth reading. Rausch says he will have visitors seeing the same colors he is seeing: "I see this place as a kaleidoscope ... You can be here for three, four, five days and have these very disparate aesthetic experiences all collapsed into one stay."
3. Unbox Shakespeare
The Amazon Unbox "Shakespeare Festival" continues this week with a free download of the BBC Anthony Hopkins/Bob Hoskins Othello
4. And now for the greatest Hamlet of all time. May I have the envelope please...
The TimesOnline this week published a longish article on the greatest Hamlet of all time. You undoubtedly will not find your nominee among them, but here is Benedict Nightingales list:
Benedict Nightingale's top ten Hamlets
1 Simon Russell Beale (2000)
2 Mark Rylance (2000)
3 Jonathan Pryce (1980)
4 Kenneth Branagh (1992)
5 Stephen Dillane (1994)
6 Ben Kingsley (1976)
7 Ralph Fiennes (1995)
8 Samuel West (2001)
9 Michael Pennington (1980)
10 Alex Jennings (1997)
The article has a few YouTubes of famous Hamlets doing the 2B monologue, and among the factoids you will pick up is: "Hamlet was once performed without Hamlet in it on its second night at the Richmond Theatre in 1787, after its star had an anxiety attack ." This may be the only production where someone didn't think it was the best Hamlet ever.
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