Well, 与我性交盲人!

So, um, it's funny that, when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to me that I'm going to be an English teacher, yet I'd never gone to a Shakespeare production until last night. It's probably more of a lack of opportunity/decent productions than any actual distaste that has driven me away (the last time that I can recall hearing about a production, it was at my high school and it was of Midsummer. If you need to see my feelings on that play, search old entries. You'll find plenty of evidence). Anyway, some friends proposed that we all go to Shakespeare in the Park, which was doing a production of As You Like It. Now, AYLI has my biggest peeve with Shakespeare in it: the Clark Kent Dilemma, or the idea that a simple disguise, like putting on men's clothes, covering your hair, and deepening your voice slightly, can make everyone around you believe you are someone else. Rosalind falls madly in love with Orlando, but she is banished to the forest. While there, she dons a disguise and runs into Orlando, who she then, in the guise of Ganymede, teaches how to woo Rosalind. Now, this convention is used in many Shakey plays, particularly Lear, Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night. It gets old really fast.
So, anyway, back to last night, so I decide to go and pay the Eight Fucking Dollars in order to get in. This adaptation of the play is in a circus around 1900, which makes me leery. My friends and I find a spot, set out a blanket, and just as we finish, the loudspeakers announce the show's starting with a booming, "All the world's a stage." I couldn't help but groan. It seems that the only thing that anyone ever remembers about this play is that stupid line. It'd be fine if they remembered the context of the speech that it's part of, or any of the speech after it. But, no, people are content just to say, "Oh, ha, all the world's a stage, you know," and go on with their lives without considering why the fuck Jacques goes on about the seven stages of man. So, with that, the play lost 5 points on my scale, and it's only a 5-point scale. The play starts, I don't really feel like paying that much attention to the crap they keep going on about, and don't really pay attention until the end of the third scene or so. There's some sort of wrestling match between Orlando and Charles, the strongman of the circus. It's fairly crappy, but whatever. Rosalind flees to the forest, dons her disguise, and drags a whining and crying Celia and servant Touchstone with her. I was nearly ready to pluck out mine eyne when intermission hit, and was almost willing to walk the mile and half back to my car alone. It wasn't horrible or badly acted, just so uninteresting and boring. In fact, I was sitting there, getting a bunch of the jokes that everyone was missing (thanks to all those Shakespeare classes), yet I wasn't laughing at them. I was just disconnected from it all, I guess.
After the intermission, there's a scene where Rosalind-as-Ganymede is teaching Orlando how to woo his love. An addition to this adaptation is that Orlando doesn't know how to dance and doesn't want to learn, but R-a-G (heh, oops) tries to teach him anyway. I'm sitting there, on the grass, expecting that I'd hate it. Rosalind starts to teach him to dance three or four times, and he breaks away each time. Music is accompanying this, a guitar that starts up when the start dancing and then stops when he breaks off. Finally, she grabs him and this dance sequence starts. It was just, I don't know, remarkable. It totally drew me in, even though it turned out to be a Dave Matthews song. The scene was just beautiful. I sat there and was enthralled. Of course, at the end, Orlando gets nervous and runs off before he kisses Rosalind (of course, he was probably just freaked out from the quasi-gay experience). Anyway, the majority of the play was a let-down. There's a sequence in the forest where someone asks Touchstone (I think) to sing a song. So, he sings "Unchained Melody." Yeah, that's right, a song from the 1950s being sung by a clown at the end of the 19th Century. The guy's voice was strong and all, it was just disconcerting I guess (God, I so did not mean to have that pun occur. Dis-concert-ing. Ugh). Oh, God, and for the "All the world's a stage" speech, there's the line before it, then a drumroll as Jacques walked to center stage. All the lights die, a spot goes on him, and he says the whole speech so solemnly that I wanted to puke. I've grown to hate that line.
Well, the play winds down, the jokes get better and funnier, and finally there's the last scene. The lights die and then some pop music starts. I can instantly identify it as Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, but it takes a few more seconds to realize what it was: "Tears of a Clown." I almost groaned, but then realized just how appropriate it was and went with it. The guy who played Touchstone was singing the song (and doing a decent job) as the cast all came out for their bows. In the end, I realized that it was actually a good production, despite the boredness that the first half inspired. It might have been better if I had sat closer to the front and been able to easily identify all the characters, but I'll probably never know.
Anyway, that's really the whole idea of this post. Just to say, Huh, I enjoyed that play after all. Well, fuck me blind! (That's the Chinese part above, by the way. If you try and use Google or Altavista to translate it back, both say "With my sexual intercourse blind person!" which is kinda close, but oy)
No SotP this time.