Well, when you put it that way
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Literally don't remember half those deaths. I gotta re read that again. Or watch the DiCaprio flick...
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Depends on the production. We didn't even have Paris in the play – that I recall – when we did it at college. And Lady Montague didn't have a death, she was just sad at the funeral.
A play that encompasses the entirety of the original would likely take 3 hours to perform. There's a lot of fat to trim for individual presentation and interpretation (even once saw a Gaza / Israel variant one of my costars was in, that was interesting).
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I don't think that's the joke, beyond a bit of "kids are fucking stupid." There's a lot of commentary out there about it possibly being a satire but it's definitely more tragedy than comedy. Midsummer Night's Dream is the comedy about whirlwind romance.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]There's a lot of comedy in R&J. It's not specified explicitly in the text, but there's a lot of subtext to work with, and a ton of room for interpretation.
Nowhere in the play does it state that the friar uses a Bible to block the kids from kissing, but in the version I was in, that was a directorial decision, and it always got a laugh. And it was apropos to the scene.
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I think this depends on your level of imagination. When I read books there is definitely a play going on in my head of the events as they unfold.
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I know it’s a book shop, but it’s still weird to me putting primacy on reading the script of the play rather than watching it in a theatre. It’s like saying “anyone who’s read the Die Hard novelisation knows how hectic the Christmas holidays can be”.
Thing with Shakespeare plays is there's no one alive today who has met anyone who was alive to see a play at The Globe. The scripts we have are just people's lines and the bare minimum stage direction. There's a lot of information missing, and you can interpret it in many ways.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone interpret Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be speech as a mentally disturbed 20 year old stomping down a hallway muttering to himself under his breath; it's always either this huge proclamation or a weirdly wistful thing. And then, immediately after, two interpretations of the Blasting Ophelia section simultaneously: with and without Hamlet noticing the king and company watching.
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But I heard the songs are good!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]"Hey Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack" lyric makes sense now
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Isn't it about how hostile families ruin shit for their kids?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]It's been ages since I've actually gone through it but what I remember of it, it goes like this:
- Roseline, the chick Romeo has the hots for, has just come out as asexual. He's not taking this well.
- To cheer him up, his buddies suggest crashing a big party at the Capulet house tonight. Romeo tags along.
- While moping at the party, he encounters Juliet. The two of them hit it off HARD, they both like Blink 182 AND Evanescence, what are the odds?
- Problem: They're respective fathers have some unspecified feud, so when it comes out just who each other are, it's a problem.
- We get a scene where Romeo is in the back yard and Juliet is in her bedroom looking out the window, two back to back speeches about "(s)he's hot, it's a shame our dads hate each other.
- They decide to run off to Vegas and get hitched anyway.
- The parties get separated, and then there is a compounding series of "a thing has happened!" "I know! I'll make it look like I've done something drastic for some damn reason, and I'll send a messenger to tell the other party that I haven't really done that." "A thing has happened, and the messenger carrying a message that would completely inform your decision hasn't arrived yet." "I know, I'll do something drastic for some damn reason!"
- This ends in the two fathers standing over an almost literal pile of corpses to include the titular teenagers, trying to remember what they were even fighting about in the first place.
- Roseline is unscathed.
Moral of the story: Latency is just as important as bandwidth.
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I only take issue with "read it". Shakespeare wrote plays. They were meant to be performed and seen, not read. "Do you bite your thumb at me?" makes a lot more sense when it's done by a good actor.
If their first introduction to Star Wars was reading the script, kids would hate that, too. Having a script can be useful for analyzing and referencing things--I do have a book of the OG Star Wars trilogy scripts--but it shouldn't be the default way we enjoy it.
I never thought of it like that. You've made me reconsider my positions on Shakespeare.
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Thanks for the spoilers.
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Any historian worth his salt will tell you that romantic love wasn't invented until the 1800s so Romeo and Juliet can't have been a love story /s
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So, basically a school shooting. Gotcha.
