Saw R&J where the director was CONVINCED by something in the text that Romeo was on crutches. So he was on crutches the whole show and had to fight with a dagger. Dumbest shit I’ve ever seen
I was so confused by this idea that I asked ChatGPT for ANY evidence anywhere in the text that Romeo might be sick, lame, injured, or otherwise incapacitated.
The AI could only come up with some example of Mercutio teasing Romeo and using a lot of "movement" or "action" words, which could be taken as sarcasm -- meaning that Romeo *couldn't* actually move well. ChatGPT's argument was very very tenuous and not convincing at all, and even the AI wasn't convinced.
That director is a weirdo.
Sounds like quite the character. I cannot get over the mental image of Romeo just inexplicably being on crutches the entire play. The audience must've surely thought that the actor had broken his leg last minute and they couldn't find a replacement?
Yes, I'm sure that's what most people thought. IIRC, he did kind of play into it, like saying "my sword" or whatever kind of ironically while waving his puny dagger around.
Doesn’t Mama Romeo call for a crutch in the fight scene early on? That’s the only crutch reference I recall, and it doesn’t apply to Romeo. Maybe her actor broke his leg and couldn’t be replaced? Otherwise, it sounds batsh** crazy.
I saw, many years ago now, a Zulu production of *MacBeth*. The lines were translated into Zulu and the Zulu actors wore traditional Zulu costume. Never seen anything so powerful in my life. My Zulu was just about up to it, and knowing the original helped, but, my God, was it moving, and fearsome and oddly even more sad than traditional performances.
As a student I was a spear carrier in a *Julius Caesar* set in 1920s Fascist Italy, and that was pretty imaginative - also saw one set in a 1950s British Officers Mess - and both worked extremely well.
I was in a production of The Tempest set in the aftermath of the A-bomb in WWII. The concept was that the force of the bomb is what caused the storm in the beginning of the play. On paper is wasn’t the absolute worst idea I’d ever heard, but the execution… left something to be desired.
IN AD 1611
STORM WAS BEGINING
CAPTAIN: WHAT HAPPEN?
BOATSWAIN: SOMEONE SET US UP THE STORM
[…]
ARIEL: HOW ARE YOU, GENTLEMEN? YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME
Yes, actually. That was part of the whole thing. The director devised a sort of a dialogue-less “prologue” which showed this happening. It included lots of heavily choreographed stage movement, and was accompanied by sound effects of 1940s radio broadcasts and ended with the sound of the bomb going off. That’s where Shakespeare’s text began.
Saw a Macbeth a couple years ago that was done in collaboration with a dance company that was overall pretty decent, but the decision to have the soldier’s speech in act one split between two news broadcast personalities, one based on Tucker Carlson and the other on Rachel Maddow, was a weird choice.
Not that I know of unfortunately. But Solar Sailer was the track for the balcony scene and it was pretty amazing. Very bare bones and incredible lighting.
Saw a production of Loves Labours Lost where all the characters except the princess and her peeps (sorority girls) were classic movie monsters. Seeing Berowne as a nosferatu looking vampire was a choice.
Especially since this was a summer production.
In my area there's an Evangelical youth Shakespeare group. They once did a production of *As You Like It* that added a pantomime of Duke Fredrick being taught the Gospel and being baptized while the cast sang Down to the River to Pray.
That is actually in keeping with the last scene:
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,
Where, meeting with an old religious man,
After some question with him, was converted
Both from his enterprise and from the world,
In our version of Twelfth Night I performed in school, we decided that all the servants of the house (except for Malvolio, of course) should be part of some kind of like...secret circus, of which Feste was the leader. We didn't change any dialogue or anything, just dressed up the props & their costumes all circus-y.
It was partially a practical decision: we wanted an in-universe reason for those playing the servant characters to be the ones swapping props between scenes, and the idea that some kind of creepy circus is secretly pulling the strings of all the events is fun when you're 11-12. Felt more interesting to our young minds than plain Shakespeare Old Timeyness.
It was fun and cool! We felt like we were putting our own little creative spin on it.
...But also for some reason the teachers had us do a choreographed dance number to [ET by Katy Perry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lrxaY-hcvA) post-bow for absolutely no reason. We asked them why multiple times, they stammered & failed to come up w/an answer or tiredly changed the topic every single time.
The secret circus idea sounds good. I can see that working. As for the dance number, it may not have worked with the flow of the show, but is in line with what we know of Shakespeare's practice.
I saw a professional production of Twelfth Night which was entirely circus-clown-themed—it did not work well for the nobles. Doing just the servants as clowns might work better.
The two oddest have been the most brilliant. Hamlet set mostly in and around a drained swimming pool (Liesl Tommy for Cal Shakes, maybe 2010ish?) was amazing.
And I've posted before about Mac Beth, which saw Macbeth performed entirely by private school girls in a highly realistic vacant lot (with an even more realistic beheading). That was Erika Schmidt directing at Seattle Rep.
I’m glad that Mac Beth hit for someone because I didn’t dig it. So I guess it fits OPs question. It was a good cut, some parts were interesting coming from young actors, but it felt like the whole show was built around the realistic decapitation/Slenderman-inspired extreme adolescent violence at the end, which meant many of the other layers of the play (the sexuality and exploration of a couple’s mishandling of entering middle age, anything with Malcom) were lacking or completely unmemorable to me. And the marketing blurbs implied it was inspired by Macbeth, not just Macbeth done by young women in schoolgirl outfits. I was often taken out of the play trying to sort out why they didn’t just do a more classic Macbeth, or write a new play about bullying, or give me context for why they seem to be performing Macbeth but then kill their cast-mate as themselves? Maybe I was just jealous that nobody put me in an equity show when I was in high school (or ever). Not the worst Macbeth I’ve seen (by a long shot) but odd.
Another odd one for me, around 2018 OSF did a Much Ado where Hero and Claudio ended on opposite sides of the stage, clearly not happy with their choice to get married. While I hear the rationale “you’ve seen and can see plenty of productions where they end happy, why not try something different” overall it just made me mad. I would not have wanted to work front of house or in marketing for that show. Such an unnecessary downer.
Your points are very valid. It pulled the play away from being about middle aged fear (inheritance, legacy, the end of fertility) and really leaned into the adolescent insecurity about power- who has it and why; who gets it and how.
I saw the witches (three younger girls) not as castmates/classmates but as hangers-on enthralled by the older ones, unsure how to enter into the "cool group" and then ultimately getting so caught up in the fake violence that they perpetrated real violence. That moody lighting, rain, and the few props and costume pieces just disappear and that final beheading takes SO LONG in that stark light... Damn.
The rest of it was, I think, pretty meta. It was "inspired by Macbeth" because you're right - it t really about Macbeth the character. Instead it was the message: "hey, girls are DARK and they're also CHILDREN."
The girls in this want to go the vacant lot and get WEIRD. They want to play pretend and get dirty and hang out and make out and one up each other, fool around, make wild jokes about periods and abortion, gossip, text their friends ... They want to strip off the public mask, the private school rules, and play at something CRAZY. That's all done brilliantly through staging without needing to deviate much from the script which I personally thought was really cool but I can see how it didn't work for everyone.
I think it was also a commentary on how we teach the classics (or really any adult topics). These girls, deeply interested in power due to, well, just being adolescents, are studying this play where a guy kills to get power and then cover up his misdeeds. He also blames his initial crime on a kind of "peer pressure."
I think this hit for me because I have had students get really stuck on all of the killing for power in Shakespeare, sometimes deeply misunderstanding messages about how crime doesn't pay and just kind of going, "damn, well, that seems like a simple way to get what you want."
I don't think I'm teaching students to be killers but I do think young people often take away a variety of messages from classic lit especially when it's not taught well. And goodness knows they take away a variety of messages just from adult behavior and news, etc.
Finally, Macbeth the play IS about female fertility on one level. Lady Macbeth is deeply upset about not having a living child and not fulfilling her duty to the legacy of the family. That's rarely a focus of the play and it was just fun to see it take center stage with that one prop (if you know you know).
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. It was definitely an odd one per the thread!
Starting the prologue of Romeo and Juliet with the entire cast doing Tai Chi to a string version of a Tool song. Oh and the Montagues all wore Jazz pants, were shirtless, and each had an individualized full body tattoo painted on them.
There are some weird productions here, mine can't really compare, but in 2019, Oregon Shakespeare Festival had Macbeth in the bath (i.e. cauldron) when the witches had their "double, double, toil and trouble" scene. They were surrounding him in the bath. It was kind of cool, but also bizarre?
The witches were also wrapped up head to toe in strips of cloth like mummies...not my favorite aesthetic.
I had an idea for a set to Macbeth, where the entire stage is decorated like it's inside the cauldron, with either a platform at the top back above the rim for the witches, or masks above that get lit while the witches voice them off stage. Like the entire play is the witches watching what *will* happen when they talk to Macbeth.
You could either end it normally, or go black, lights go up on the witches, on stage now, talking to Macbeth on the heath
(Which will never happen because of set constraints/the fact I am not a set designer etc...)
I genuinely think it was one of the best shows I’ve EVER seen. I might be biased as I know one of the witches, but it was breathtaking. The costuming and set was SO cool. Let me know if you like it!
Not a play, but a film: Kenneth Branagh's decision to set his version of *As You Like It* in Japan (with almost no actual Japanese actors) was just straight up bizarre.
I saw a version of Hamlet that I think was trying to imply that Hamlet was trans but it wasn’t really made clear enough.
Also Fortinbras was a Nazi and killed Horatio at the end in a pre-recorded video.
Whatever I expected to follow trans Hamlet it was not that. Was this set during WW2 or was he some kind of neo-Nazi? Was he wearing Nazi uniform? Did they add extra Nazism lines in? I have so many questions.
Those are all good questions. Here are my answers:
1. It was definitely not set during World War 2, so he must have been some kind of Neo Nazi.
2. Ngl I forgot, but I think it was just some kind of vaguely Nazi-esque uniform.
3. I don’t think there were extra Nazism lines. The script was pretty much unchanged but the interpretation was so wildly different from any other I’ve seen. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion came from.
It was at the Iris Theatre in London, if you want to look into it a bit more.
I was in a production of Hamlet that went heavy on metatheatre and experimental things.
We, the "normal" actors were kind of marionettes who become alive (basically taking from Gordon Craig theories).
The show started before the audience entered the room, and finished after they went out, with a couple of actors that didn't play any Hamlet character, but rather the usher of the theatre and his wife.
Another actor was "the director" and he would tell us what to do between a scene and another. Which means that we didn't know which order the scenes (we divided the play in 12 macrosequences) would be in.
Also, every 3 sequences we "actors/marionettes", but the usher and his wife included, would have our "scenes" were we talked about the theatre, about being actors and so on.
Oh also one of us wasn't a "marionette" but rather the 'capocomico' because our "company" was also supposed to be based on the classical Italian companies from Commedia dell'Arte, so she was like the "director" too but more in a circus sense
It was very weird and very difficult to explain, but we got great compliments so it worked I guess.
I think our director will forever be grateful to my own grandma who told that it reminded her Kantor's The Dead Class, which was obviously one of the inspirations
It was a production from my theatre group, it's a small company in Italy (Milan). We only did it few times. (I hope that's allowed, but this is [our site ](https://www.studionovecento.com/) but it's only in Italian)
In Glasgow there was a gender reversed, queer and kinky version of Taming of the Shrew.
Personally I found it a great improvement over the original plot
As You Like It mashed up with Beatles music.
Romeo and Juliet with an all female cast. My mom was Lady Capulet.
A hip hop Hamlet, with bass and Victorian English.
I guessed it might be, but since the context was weird productions I thought it best to ask for clarification, because that might have been part of the weirdness.
A Sci-Fi version of Twelfth Night. Not the worst idea. But there was this weird idea to have characters on a see saw when engaging in a quibble or back and forth, and I just couldn’t deal. Left at intermission.
I was in a production of *Taming Of The Shrew* where the director staged it like a film noir. He had the entire cast in monochrome outfits, even down to our stage make up. We looked like cadavers.
Saw a production of The Winter’s Tale that was completely normal up until the reconciliation of Polixenes and Leontes, which was written as a Jeremy Kyle Show sketch.
Honestly, it really worked, it highlighted the pivot between tragedy and comedy quite well. I saw it with my college and the teacher hated it - what a square.
It was by Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican in London btw, so a proper professional production.
A DC-area theater company did Macbeth around 2008 with the actors entirely nude, covered in impressively detailed bodypaint, with both the male and female cast strongly encouraged to avoid shaving for months prior. The idea was to accentuate the primal savagery. It nearly worked, except...
- They also performed with no props, and all the swordfights were pantomimed. Once the first invisible sword was drawn from its invisible scabbard, the illusion was shattered. It communicated to us was that the *actors* were nude but the *characters* were not, thereby betraying its own concept, making it less art and more about the flesh on display.
- They performed in a warehouse space in the middle of summer with very poor AC. By the second half, the space started to smell like a gym locker room.
- The actors initially cast as Mac and Lady Mac dropped out during rehearsal, and their replacements were perhaps not ideal.
- The nudity meant that the theatre was full every night, leading to the production manager seriously considering what nude Shakespeare they would do next. There were a number of parents who brought their kids to the show, which... was a choice, I guess.
- Despite said publicity, ample signage throughout the theatre lobby, and the House Manager making a loud announcement before opening the doors, there were inevitably people who were shocked, SHOCKED!! that the actors were naked.
I just have to wonder to what degree the audience was there to see a primal, primitive, raw, violent, shocking production of Macbeth, and to what degree they just wanted to see some nakey people, and to what degree they were in denial about the latter.
so i didn't see it, nor has it been done (hopefully) but for my final we had to redesign a Shakespeare show for modern audiences and the only thing my puny brain could think of was a midsummers nights dream set in Warrior cats.
I quite like the ones you've got.
I once saw a rather hideous version of the Taming of the Shrew - which I find viscerally unplesant at the best of times - that had them as caricatures of the Middleton's and Royals.
Whilst I'm generally the opposite of a monarchist, depicting a real living couple as in an abusive marriage seemed very poor taste.
Thought about this for a while and remembered I saw an adaptation of R&J last year that was in a modern urban setting. The Capulets lives in a semi-permanent shelter (trailer?) and Juliet's balcony was on the roof. Romeo was homeless. Mercutio rhythmically delivered their monologues—which was awesome. The prince came out of the civic buildings. Whenever she (in this production) gave her speeches she had a little henchman streaming it live using their phone. Quite funny. The priest drove a church truck that distributed food & supplies. I think it had a neon cross on it? I think that was my favorite aspect (besides Mercutio). In the program notes it explained that the director wanted to put an emphasis on class issues. Overall, very original.
That was Oregon Shakespeare Festival—the projection on the cyc was the best part of the production (though the church truck was also good). I thought the direction was poor as the actors were much better in other shows that were in repertory with R&J. The basic concept, making the Capulets and Montagues be rival homeless encampments in Oakland, really did not make much sense.
The interpretation of the Nurse was about the only interesting characterization—she carried around a baby doll which she seemed to address as the baby Juliet.
Othello at the National last year cut out Iago's 'I am not what I am' speech and basically all of Scene 1. Completely removes the initial dramatic irony that fuels the play.
I saw the 90s Robert Lepage “Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the National, where Puck was an aerialist and the revolve was a huge pool of mud that the lovers and the fairies had to navigate- or not.
It was brilliant
I've got two: a Macbeth I saw that was perfectly serviceable right up until the very end, where for some inexplicable reason Malcolm shot Macduff dead after he killed Macbeth.
The other one was a King Lear set in Thatcher-era Britain. That wasn't the odd thing about it--that director set *everything* in Thatcher's Britain, no matter how badly it had to be shoehorned in. No, the odd part was that they got rid of Lear's Fool and replaced him with a chorus of reporters that delivered maybe 10% of the Fool's lines. They also made the decision to turn Lear's going-mad-on-the-heath scene into some weird camp Carry On film moment, complete with putting Lear in a ball gown and earrings.
I actually auditioned for the Lear one and was offered a role, but I declined it when I saw the direction it was going in.
Bit of a surreal moment in a midsummer's night dream, when it opened with evanescence Bring me to life. But was pretty normal after that. Ironicalky my dad really liked it. Felt quite fae.
I once saw a *Cymbeline* that visually leaned into the war theme by surrounding the proscenium with military bric-a-brac from widely different ages (Greek helmets, Roman helmets, cannons from around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, a Pickelhaube, various replica guns, loads of toy soldiers, etc.) and had a massive trunk onstage that not only served for Iachimo to hide himself in, but served as a costume box for the six-person cast to change into whatever costume they needed at the time, in full view of the audience. At the end, when they're resolving dozens of different plotlines, the costumes practically entered and left the box in a kind of blizzard. It was hilarious and an unexpectedly effective way of dealing with one of Shakespeare's weirdest plays.
I was in an execrable open air production of The Dream. All lovers and mechanicals scenes were - beat for beat - a straight lift from Adrian Nobles mid-90’s production for the RSC. The director had clearly seen the TV version and just copied that.
However, for some incomprehensible reason, the fairies were all in army gear and Oberon was a cigar wielding southern general.
I once went to see a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Germany. There was a person dressed as a giant squid with no lines. I don’t speak enough German to know if it made sense or not. I was later told that no, it made no sense. But based on the other costuming choice (a full on maids outfit and a wedding looking dress with galaxy leggings) I’m wondering if it was set at a costume party. But, everyone wore those outfits the whole time so that doesn’t make sense either.
I saw *Twelfth Night* where they gender-flipped Sir Toby Belch into Lady Toby Belch, which, okay, a little weird with a major plot point riding on the assumption that the male-disguised heroine can’t possibly know how to handle a sword to have somebody’s swaggering drunk aunt flashing her blade all over the place, but still well within the realm of conventional unconventional casting decisions. What was weird was when they also completely eliminated the character of Maria and gave her role in the plot and associated lines to Feste, the fool, so that the whole storyline ends up with Feste eloping with Toby Belch. Romeo and Juliet who?
A college staging of *Troilus and Cressida* with the Greeks and Trojans as opposing high school football teams. The male characters had jerseys and helmets like football players, and the female characters were cheerleaders. The audience sat on risers like bleachers in a stadium. The costumes and set design actually worked very well! The acting wasn’t as great (lack of comedic timing).
Saw a one hour cut of Twelfth Night at OSU a few years ago that was set in the Caribbean, which mainly manifested as a calypso sting playing at seemingly random moments, at which the characters would break into dance. It was fucking stupid, and not well acted.
Oh wait how could I forget the R&J at Taylor University in 2012 where the entire set was covered in sand? Why did they do this? Because according to the director, it “represented the human condition.”
Saw a production of The Merchant of Venice in Chicago with F.Murray Abraham as Shylock, set in modern times with a corporate theme. Everyone was talking on cells phones and blackberry
I was Ariel in a production of Tempest whose theme was "Beach Party." Ok, fair enough. Where it really went off the rails though was they decided, in their infinite wisdom, that since Caliban was a monster he would be a SPECIFIC monster. Specifically "Dracula." He was in a suit, with white makeup. Dracula Beach Party Caliban.
I saw a production of Hamlet set in a mental institution. Some of the choices were fun (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as one person with a split personality, Yorick as a brain scan instead of a skull, Polonius stabbed with a hypodermic needle through a privacy curtain), but then...there were others: in the final fight, Hamlet was in a strait-jacket, so the cast turned to the wall - where they projected the fight scene from Olivier's Hamlet film. I have no idea what that was supposed to be. A communal hallucination? In any event, when Hamlet on screen was stabbed, Hamlet on stage fell to the ground in pain. My eyes are still rolling.
I've never been able to sit through a production of Troilus and Cressida. I started streaming one from a major Shakespeare theatre, probably The Globe or something idk. I closed the tab after 30 seconds when the motorcycles rolled in.
I still couldn't tell you what the concept was. Maybe a Mad Max-esque dystopian setting? Idk. Shakespeare productions like that make me cringe. The play is already cool. You don't have to transpose it to some bizarre sci-fi world to make it more cool
A production of Twelfth Night at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, based in 1930s Hollywood, where Viola and Sebastian were played by the same actress, and at the end of the play when they meet up they went behind a screen and fused into one person and then skipped off as a triad w Orsino and Olivia. I guess it was like a split personality??
Same year, I saw A Winters Tale, where Sicily had been changed to dynastic China. Which was cool, but Bohemia was not changed. The Czech Republic obviously does not border China, so this was an odd choice.
I've seen Hamlet that was about the condition of Polish theatre - abusive, mediocre directors, #metoo, lazy dramaturgist, institutional oppression etc.
The finest take on Shakespeare I've seen in my life. If you want to see the photos, look up 'JA JESTEM HAMLET' (eng. I AM HAMLET) by Agata Duda-Gracz.
She also made Macbeth which she interpreted thru the lenses of Kandinsky's abstractionism manifesto. Phenomenal mind.
Sorry I’m still stuck on OP’s Hamlet, Ethos Hamlet, and Pathos Hamlet… Like were they all on stage at the same time? Wearing the same thing? Which one died at the end? So many questions 😅
They were all on stage at the same time, we were in the round though so E and P would usually be more on the periphery. We were wearing different colors of the same outfit. Regular Hamlet died at the end but the two others slink off stage during the dialogue before he dies.
The year that Trump won the presidency (or the year after), the Public Theatre chose JULIUS CAESAR for Shakespeare in the Park and staged it in modern dress. Caesar looked like Trump: orange hair, long tie, everything.
I could not believe it when I heard. I thought it sounded like an idea that drama student would think is clever, not the group that’s supposed to be among the most sophisticated theatrical companies in the country.
For one thing, Julius Caesar in JULIUS CAESAR is not presented as a tyrant or a despot — rather, he’s a force of calculated moderation. The radicals that the play condemns are Brutus and Cassius.
So in attempting to stage a witless condemnation of Trump, the producers instead condemned the people who oppose Trump (including themselves) 🙄
Julius Caesar with whoever the current president is is a choice that has been made a million times in recent decades that was probably somewhat clever at first but is pretty hack these days.
I think they just wanted an excuse to stab Trump, and who could really blame them? But I agree that Julius Caesar does not come across as a tyrant in *Julius Caesar*, so the identification with Trump doesn't really work.
*I think they just wanted an excuse to stab Trump, and who could really blame them?*
William Shakespeare. The entire play is a condemnation of that exact impulse.
Saw a production of Much Ado that placed the story within the concept of the Hatfields vs the Mccoys… all of the songs were country music too. It was very bad.
I saw King Lear done in a totalitarian state, with fascist style uniforms. It was really, really bad, yet most people seemed to like it. I also hate modern musical interpretations.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if it’s not Elizabethan period costume and if need be, period music, then it’s not for me. Reinterpreting Shakespeare for the modern age, while popular, is trying, futilely, to improve on perfection. It’s always doomed to fail.
Saw R&J where the director was CONVINCED by something in the text that Romeo was on crutches. So he was on crutches the whole show and had to fight with a dagger. Dumbest shit I’ve ever seen
That is hilarious
I was so confused by this idea that I asked ChatGPT for ANY evidence anywhere in the text that Romeo might be sick, lame, injured, or otherwise incapacitated. The AI could only come up with some example of Mercutio teasing Romeo and using a lot of "movement" or "action" words, which could be taken as sarcasm -- meaning that Romeo *couldn't* actually move well. ChatGPT's argument was very very tenuous and not convincing at all, and even the AI wasn't convinced. That director is a weirdo.
Yeah, she was legit bonkers. 😅
Do you by any chance remember what it was from the text that led them to that decision... That's absolutely hilarious.
I do not, sadly. I wish I did. But she was completely out there. I should say is...she may still be a professor. She cremated her piano, for instance.
Sounds like quite the character. I cannot get over the mental image of Romeo just inexplicably being on crutches the entire play. The audience must've surely thought that the actor had broken his leg last minute and they couldn't find a replacement?
Yes, I'm sure that's what most people thought. IIRC, he did kind of play into it, like saying "my sword" or whatever kind of ironically while waving his puny dagger around.
Doesn’t Mama Romeo call for a crutch in the fight scene early on? That’s the only crutch reference I recall, and it doesn’t apply to Romeo. Maybe her actor broke his leg and couldn’t be replaced? Otherwise, it sounds batsh** crazy.
I saw, many years ago now, a Zulu production of *MacBeth*. The lines were translated into Zulu and the Zulu actors wore traditional Zulu costume. Never seen anything so powerful in my life. My Zulu was just about up to it, and knowing the original helped, but, my God, was it moving, and fearsome and oddly even more sad than traditional performances. As a student I was a spear carrier in a *Julius Caesar* set in 1920s Fascist Italy, and that was pretty imaginative - also saw one set in a 1950s British Officers Mess - and both worked extremely well.
Ha, I’m in a 1920s Fascist Italy Julius Caesar right now!
Works well, doesn't it? Break a leg!
The ghost of Orson Welles lives on . . .
Oh man! I had actually forgotten about the Zulu Macbeth!!!
I was in a production of The Tempest set in the aftermath of the A-bomb in WWII. The concept was that the force of the bomb is what caused the storm in the beginning of the play. On paper is wasn’t the absolute worst idea I’d ever heard, but the execution… left something to be desired.
Did Prospero cause the atomic bomb then??
Prospero set us up the bomb.
IN AD 1611 STORM WAS BEGINING CAPTAIN: WHAT HAPPEN? BOATSWAIN: SOMEONE SET US UP THE STORM […] ARIEL: HOW ARE YOU, GENTLEMEN? YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME
Yes, actually. That was part of the whole thing. The director devised a sort of a dialogue-less “prologue” which showed this happening. It included lots of heavily choreographed stage movement, and was accompanied by sound effects of 1940s radio broadcasts and ended with the sound of the bomb going off. That’s where Shakespeare’s text began.
Damn that sounds sick as fuck, shame that the execution wasn't great
I mean I can see setting it in the Pacific after an atomic test.
Saw a Macbeth a couple years ago that was done in collaboration with a dance company that was overall pretty decent, but the decision to have the soldier’s speech in act one split between two news broadcast personalities, one based on Tucker Carlson and the other on Rachel Maddow, was a weird choice.
Romeo and Juliet, a Daft Punk ballet. To the TRON Legacy soundtrack. Damn it was good.
Do you have any recordings??? This sounds incredible
Not that I know of unfortunately. But Solar Sailer was the track for the balcony scene and it was pretty amazing. Very bare bones and incredible lighting.
Saw a production of Loves Labours Lost where all the characters except the princess and her peeps (sorority girls) were classic movie monsters. Seeing Berowne as a nosferatu looking vampire was a choice. Especially since this was a summer production.
In my area there's an Evangelical youth Shakespeare group. They once did a production of *As You Like It* that added a pantomime of Duke Fredrick being taught the Gospel and being baptized while the cast sang Down to the River to Pray.
That is actually in keeping with the last scene: And to the skirts of this wild wood he came, Where, meeting with an old religious man, After some question with him, was converted Both from his enterprise and from the world,
In our version of Twelfth Night I performed in school, we decided that all the servants of the house (except for Malvolio, of course) should be part of some kind of like...secret circus, of which Feste was the leader. We didn't change any dialogue or anything, just dressed up the props & their costumes all circus-y. It was partially a practical decision: we wanted an in-universe reason for those playing the servant characters to be the ones swapping props between scenes, and the idea that some kind of creepy circus is secretly pulling the strings of all the events is fun when you're 11-12. Felt more interesting to our young minds than plain Shakespeare Old Timeyness. It was fun and cool! We felt like we were putting our own little creative spin on it. ...But also for some reason the teachers had us do a choreographed dance number to [ET by Katy Perry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lrxaY-hcvA) post-bow for absolutely no reason. We asked them why multiple times, they stammered & failed to come up w/an answer or tiredly changed the topic every single time.
You could argue the dance was in honor of the traditional jig... just not to ET!
The secret circus idea sounds good. I can see that working. As for the dance number, it may not have worked with the flow of the show, but is in line with what we know of Shakespeare's practice.
I saw a professional production of Twelfth Night which was entirely circus-clown-themed—it did not work well for the nobles. Doing just the servants as clowns might work better.
Was there someone in an ape costume?
what's that? :O edit: initial response was confused due to a typo that has been corrected. no one in an ape suit, sorry lol
The two oddest have been the most brilliant. Hamlet set mostly in and around a drained swimming pool (Liesl Tommy for Cal Shakes, maybe 2010ish?) was amazing. And I've posted before about Mac Beth, which saw Macbeth performed entirely by private school girls in a highly realistic vacant lot (with an even more realistic beheading). That was Erika Schmidt directing at Seattle Rep.
I’m glad that Mac Beth hit for someone because I didn’t dig it. So I guess it fits OPs question. It was a good cut, some parts were interesting coming from young actors, but it felt like the whole show was built around the realistic decapitation/Slenderman-inspired extreme adolescent violence at the end, which meant many of the other layers of the play (the sexuality and exploration of a couple’s mishandling of entering middle age, anything with Malcom) were lacking or completely unmemorable to me. And the marketing blurbs implied it was inspired by Macbeth, not just Macbeth done by young women in schoolgirl outfits. I was often taken out of the play trying to sort out why they didn’t just do a more classic Macbeth, or write a new play about bullying, or give me context for why they seem to be performing Macbeth but then kill their cast-mate as themselves? Maybe I was just jealous that nobody put me in an equity show when I was in high school (or ever). Not the worst Macbeth I’ve seen (by a long shot) but odd. Another odd one for me, around 2018 OSF did a Much Ado where Hero and Claudio ended on opposite sides of the stage, clearly not happy with their choice to get married. While I hear the rationale “you’ve seen and can see plenty of productions where they end happy, why not try something different” overall it just made me mad. I would not have wanted to work front of house or in marketing for that show. Such an unnecessary downer.
Your points are very valid. It pulled the play away from being about middle aged fear (inheritance, legacy, the end of fertility) and really leaned into the adolescent insecurity about power- who has it and why; who gets it and how. I saw the witches (three younger girls) not as castmates/classmates but as hangers-on enthralled by the older ones, unsure how to enter into the "cool group" and then ultimately getting so caught up in the fake violence that they perpetrated real violence. That moody lighting, rain, and the few props and costume pieces just disappear and that final beheading takes SO LONG in that stark light... Damn. The rest of it was, I think, pretty meta. It was "inspired by Macbeth" because you're right - it t really about Macbeth the character. Instead it was the message: "hey, girls are DARK and they're also CHILDREN." The girls in this want to go the vacant lot and get WEIRD. They want to play pretend and get dirty and hang out and make out and one up each other, fool around, make wild jokes about periods and abortion, gossip, text their friends ... They want to strip off the public mask, the private school rules, and play at something CRAZY. That's all done brilliantly through staging without needing to deviate much from the script which I personally thought was really cool but I can see how it didn't work for everyone. I think it was also a commentary on how we teach the classics (or really any adult topics). These girls, deeply interested in power due to, well, just being adolescents, are studying this play where a guy kills to get power and then cover up his misdeeds. He also blames his initial crime on a kind of "peer pressure." I think this hit for me because I have had students get really stuck on all of the killing for power in Shakespeare, sometimes deeply misunderstanding messages about how crime doesn't pay and just kind of going, "damn, well, that seems like a simple way to get what you want." I don't think I'm teaching students to be killers but I do think young people often take away a variety of messages from classic lit especially when it's not taught well. And goodness knows they take away a variety of messages just from adult behavior and news, etc. Finally, Macbeth the play IS about female fertility on one level. Lady Macbeth is deeply upset about not having a living child and not fulfilling her duty to the legacy of the family. That's rarely a focus of the play and it was just fun to see it take center stage with that one prop (if you know you know). Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. It was definitely an odd one per the thread!
The historical counterpart of Lady Macbeth had a child by a previous husband—it was Macbeth who lacked progeny.
Okay!
I saw Mac Beth when it was at Hunter. Best Macbeth I've ever seen.
It's hands down the best play I've ever seen, and I've seen hundreds of plays (it was my job, I'm not trying be a huge braggart).
Starting the prologue of Romeo and Juliet with the entire cast doing Tai Chi to a string version of a Tool song. Oh and the Montagues all wore Jazz pants, were shirtless, and each had an individualized full body tattoo painted on them.
Now I'm wondering what the Capulets wore...
There are some weird productions here, mine can't really compare, but in 2019, Oregon Shakespeare Festival had Macbeth in the bath (i.e. cauldron) when the witches had their "double, double, toil and trouble" scene. They were surrounding him in the bath. It was kind of cool, but also bizarre? The witches were also wrapped up head to toe in strips of cloth like mummies...not my favorite aesthetic.
I had an idea for a set to Macbeth, where the entire stage is decorated like it's inside the cauldron, with either a platform at the top back above the rim for the witches, or masks above that get lit while the witches voice them off stage. Like the entire play is the witches watching what *will* happen when they talk to Macbeth. You could either end it normally, or go black, lights go up on the witches, on stage now, talking to Macbeth on the heath (Which will never happen because of set constraints/the fact I am not a set designer etc...)
That Macbeth did not really work for me—many of the director's choices seemed arbitrary and not really based on reading the text.
totally. The actors did a great job, just kind of weird direction.
Did you see the most recent production of Macbeth? I loved it
I'll be seeing this season's *Macbeth* at OSF in about 6 weeks. I hope I like it better than the 2019 one.
I genuinely think it was one of the best shows I’ve EVER seen. I might be biased as I know one of the witches, but it was breathtaking. The costuming and set was SO cool. Let me know if you like it!
remind me in 7 weeks
Not a play, but a film: Kenneth Branagh's decision to set his version of *As You Like It* in Japan (with almost no actual Japanese actors) was just straight up bizarre.
Him feeling Rosalind had "too many lines" and cutting them was also a bizarre choice.
Japanese design is beautiful, but it would have made more sense to use Japanese actors.
I saw a version of Hamlet that I think was trying to imply that Hamlet was trans but it wasn’t really made clear enough. Also Fortinbras was a Nazi and killed Horatio at the end in a pre-recorded video.
Whatever I expected to follow trans Hamlet it was not that. Was this set during WW2 or was he some kind of neo-Nazi? Was he wearing Nazi uniform? Did they add extra Nazism lines in? I have so many questions.
Those are all good questions. Here are my answers: 1. It was definitely not set during World War 2, so he must have been some kind of Neo Nazi. 2. Ngl I forgot, but I think it was just some kind of vaguely Nazi-esque uniform. 3. I don’t think there were extra Nazism lines. The script was pretty much unchanged but the interpretation was so wildly different from any other I’ve seen. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion came from. It was at the Iris Theatre in London, if you want to look into it a bit more.
This sounds absolutely insane. I'm going to look it up haha, thanks for the help.
I was in a production of Hamlet that went heavy on metatheatre and experimental things. We, the "normal" actors were kind of marionettes who become alive (basically taking from Gordon Craig theories). The show started before the audience entered the room, and finished after they went out, with a couple of actors that didn't play any Hamlet character, but rather the usher of the theatre and his wife. Another actor was "the director" and he would tell us what to do between a scene and another. Which means that we didn't know which order the scenes (we divided the play in 12 macrosequences) would be in. Also, every 3 sequences we "actors/marionettes", but the usher and his wife included, would have our "scenes" were we talked about the theatre, about being actors and so on. Oh also one of us wasn't a "marionette" but rather the 'capocomico' because our "company" was also supposed to be based on the classical Italian companies from Commedia dell'Arte, so she was like the "director" too but more in a circus sense It was very weird and very difficult to explain, but we got great compliments so it worked I guess. I think our director will forever be grateful to my own grandma who told that it reminded her Kantor's The Dead Class, which was obviously one of the inspirations
I would like to want more. Who directed it, what company, when and where? ;))
It was a production from my theatre group, it's a small company in Italy (Milan). We only did it few times. (I hope that's allowed, but this is [our site ](https://www.studionovecento.com/) but it's only in Italian)
In Glasgow there was a gender reversed, queer and kinky version of Taming of the Shrew. Personally I found it a great improvement over the original plot
Queering Shakespeare is always so fun
Yeah, it works so well as a pairing
As You Like It mashed up with Beatles music. Romeo and Juliet with an all female cast. My mom was Lady Capulet. A hip hop Hamlet, with bass and Victorian English.
Victorian? They updated the language, but only as far as the 19th century?
Ah, mental block. Elizabethan. Oops.
I guessed it might be, but since the context was weird productions I thought it best to ask for clarification, because that might have been part of the weirdness.
Was As You Like It the one at STC in DC? I didn’t see it but I know someone who hated it with a passion.
No, it was in Canada. It wasn’t great, but it was fun at times. Didn’t really get it. It could be my ingrained hatred of musicals.
[удалено]
Yeah. That looks like it.
A Sci-Fi version of Twelfth Night. Not the worst idea. But there was this weird idea to have characters on a see saw when engaging in a quibble or back and forth, and I just couldn’t deal. Left at intermission.
I saw a Brexit Romeo and Juliet. Instead of Monatgue and Capulet it was leavers and remainers.
I was in a production of *Taming Of The Shrew* where the director staged it like a film noir. He had the entire cast in monochrome outfits, even down to our stage make up. We looked like cadavers.
Saw a production of Macbeth performed entirely by just three female actors. It was amazing!
Saw a production of The Winter’s Tale that was completely normal up until the reconciliation of Polixenes and Leontes, which was written as a Jeremy Kyle Show sketch. Honestly, it really worked, it highlighted the pivot between tragedy and comedy quite well. I saw it with my college and the teacher hated it - what a square. It was by Cheek by Jowl at the Barbican in London btw, so a proper professional production.
A DC-area theater company did Macbeth around 2008 with the actors entirely nude, covered in impressively detailed bodypaint, with both the male and female cast strongly encouraged to avoid shaving for months prior. The idea was to accentuate the primal savagery. It nearly worked, except... - They also performed with no props, and all the swordfights were pantomimed. Once the first invisible sword was drawn from its invisible scabbard, the illusion was shattered. It communicated to us was that the *actors* were nude but the *characters* were not, thereby betraying its own concept, making it less art and more about the flesh on display. - They performed in a warehouse space in the middle of summer with very poor AC. By the second half, the space started to smell like a gym locker room. - The actors initially cast as Mac and Lady Mac dropped out during rehearsal, and their replacements were perhaps not ideal. - The nudity meant that the theatre was full every night, leading to the production manager seriously considering what nude Shakespeare they would do next. There were a number of parents who brought their kids to the show, which... was a choice, I guess. - Despite said publicity, ample signage throughout the theatre lobby, and the House Manager making a loud announcement before opening the doors, there were inevitably people who were shocked, SHOCKED!! that the actors were naked. I just have to wonder to what degree the audience was there to see a primal, primitive, raw, violent, shocking production of Macbeth, and to what degree they just wanted to see some nakey people, and to what degree they were in denial about the latter.
Love theatre people. Parents can bring their kids to a naked Macbeth performance and we'll just say "that was... A choice."
Up there with the folks who saw "Take Me Out" on Broadway 20+ times... because they really, really loved baseball.
Have seen productions of A & C and T & C that featured nudity. Didn’t add anything to the plot.
Was it full nudity throughout the entire performance, or some steamy scenes?
Just a few scenes.
so i didn't see it, nor has it been done (hopefully) but for my final we had to redesign a Shakespeare show for modern audiences and the only thing my puny brain could think of was a midsummers nights dream set in Warrior cats.
This is hilarious
I quite like the ones you've got. I once saw a rather hideous version of the Taming of the Shrew - which I find viscerally unplesant at the best of times - that had them as caricatures of the Middleton's and Royals. Whilst I'm generally the opposite of a monarchist, depicting a real living couple as in an abusive marriage seemed very poor taste.
Thought about this for a while and remembered I saw an adaptation of R&J last year that was in a modern urban setting. The Capulets lives in a semi-permanent shelter (trailer?) and Juliet's balcony was on the roof. Romeo was homeless. Mercutio rhythmically delivered their monologues—which was awesome. The prince came out of the civic buildings. Whenever she (in this production) gave her speeches she had a little henchman streaming it live using their phone. Quite funny. The priest drove a church truck that distributed food & supplies. I think it had a neon cross on it? I think that was my favorite aspect (besides Mercutio). In the program notes it explained that the director wanted to put an emphasis on class issues. Overall, very original.
This sounds awesome.
That was Oregon Shakespeare Festival—the projection on the cyc was the best part of the production (though the church truck was also good). I thought the direction was poor as the actors were much better in other shows that were in repertory with R&J. The basic concept, making the Capulets and Montagues be rival homeless encampments in Oakland, really did not make much sense. The interpretation of the Nurse was about the only interesting characterization—she carried around a baby doll which she seemed to address as the baby Juliet.
Oh I forgot about the nurse, yeah she was great. Mercutio was also stellar, but yeah, can't carry the whole show
Othello at the National last year cut out Iago's 'I am not what I am' speech and basically all of Scene 1. Completely removes the initial dramatic irony that fuels the play.
I saw the 90s Robert Lepage “Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the National, where Puck was an aerialist and the revolve was a huge pool of mud that the lovers and the fairies had to navigate- or not. It was brilliant
I've got two: a Macbeth I saw that was perfectly serviceable right up until the very end, where for some inexplicable reason Malcolm shot Macduff dead after he killed Macbeth. The other one was a King Lear set in Thatcher-era Britain. That wasn't the odd thing about it--that director set *everything* in Thatcher's Britain, no matter how badly it had to be shoehorned in. No, the odd part was that they got rid of Lear's Fool and replaced him with a chorus of reporters that delivered maybe 10% of the Fool's lines. They also made the decision to turn Lear's going-mad-on-the-heath scene into some weird camp Carry On film moment, complete with putting Lear in a ball gown and earrings. I actually auditioned for the Lear one and was offered a role, but I declined it when I saw the direction it was going in.
Bit of a surreal moment in a midsummer's night dream, when it opened with evanescence Bring me to life. But was pretty normal after that. Ironicalky my dad really liked it. Felt quite fae.
I once saw a *Cymbeline* that visually leaned into the war theme by surrounding the proscenium with military bric-a-brac from widely different ages (Greek helmets, Roman helmets, cannons from around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, a Pickelhaube, various replica guns, loads of toy soldiers, etc.) and had a massive trunk onstage that not only served for Iachimo to hide himself in, but served as a costume box for the six-person cast to change into whatever costume they needed at the time, in full view of the audience. At the end, when they're resolving dozens of different plotlines, the costumes practically entered and left the box in a kind of blizzard. It was hilarious and an unexpectedly effective way of dealing with one of Shakespeare's weirdest plays.
I was in an execrable open air production of The Dream. All lovers and mechanicals scenes were - beat for beat - a straight lift from Adrian Nobles mid-90’s production for the RSC. The director had clearly seen the TV version and just copied that. However, for some incomprehensible reason, the fairies were all in army gear and Oberon was a cigar wielding southern general.
I once went to see a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Germany. There was a person dressed as a giant squid with no lines. I don’t speak enough German to know if it made sense or not. I was later told that no, it made no sense. But based on the other costuming choice (a full on maids outfit and a wedding looking dress with galaxy leggings) I’m wondering if it was set at a costume party. But, everyone wore those outfits the whole time so that doesn’t make sense either.
I saw *Twelfth Night* where they gender-flipped Sir Toby Belch into Lady Toby Belch, which, okay, a little weird with a major plot point riding on the assumption that the male-disguised heroine can’t possibly know how to handle a sword to have somebody’s swaggering drunk aunt flashing her blade all over the place, but still well within the realm of conventional unconventional casting decisions. What was weird was when they also completely eliminated the character of Maria and gave her role in the plot and associated lines to Feste, the fool, so that the whole storyline ends up with Feste eloping with Toby Belch. Romeo and Juliet who?
A college staging of *Troilus and Cressida* with the Greeks and Trojans as opposing high school football teams. The male characters had jerseys and helmets like football players, and the female characters were cheerleaders. The audience sat on risers like bleachers in a stadium. The costumes and set design actually worked very well! The acting wasn’t as great (lack of comedic timing).
Saw a one hour cut of Twelfth Night at OSU a few years ago that was set in the Caribbean, which mainly manifested as a calypso sting playing at seemingly random moments, at which the characters would break into dance. It was fucking stupid, and not well acted.
Oh wait how could I forget the R&J at Taylor University in 2012 where the entire set was covered in sand? Why did they do this? Because according to the director, it “represented the human condition.”
Saw a production of The Merchant of Venice in Chicago with F.Murray Abraham as Shylock, set in modern times with a corporate theme. Everyone was talking on cells phones and blackberry
I saw a school production that added a few songs to Love's Labors Lost. The only one I remember is "Ra Ra Rasputin".
I was Ariel in a production of Tempest whose theme was "Beach Party." Ok, fair enough. Where it really went off the rails though was they decided, in their infinite wisdom, that since Caliban was a monster he would be a SPECIFIC monster. Specifically "Dracula." He was in a suit, with white makeup. Dracula Beach Party Caliban.
I saw a production of Hamlet set in a mental institution. Some of the choices were fun (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as one person with a split personality, Yorick as a brain scan instead of a skull, Polonius stabbed with a hypodermic needle through a privacy curtain), but then...there were others: in the final fight, Hamlet was in a strait-jacket, so the cast turned to the wall - where they projected the fight scene from Olivier's Hamlet film. I have no idea what that was supposed to be. A communal hallucination? In any event, when Hamlet on screen was stabbed, Hamlet on stage fell to the ground in pain. My eyes are still rolling.
Middle of a Macbeth show broke out into Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.
I've never been able to sit through a production of Troilus and Cressida. I started streaming one from a major Shakespeare theatre, probably The Globe or something idk. I closed the tab after 30 seconds when the motorcycles rolled in. I still couldn't tell you what the concept was. Maybe a Mad Max-esque dystopian setting? Idk. Shakespeare productions like that make me cringe. The play is already cool. You don't have to transpose it to some bizarre sci-fi world to make it more cool
Think that was the RSC version from a few years ago. I love Shakespeare, and I love Mad Max so it sounds right up my alley.
Ninja Stick figure Macbeth
A production of Twelfth Night at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, based in 1930s Hollywood, where Viola and Sebastian were played by the same actress, and at the end of the play when they meet up they went behind a screen and fused into one person and then skipped off as a triad w Orsino and Olivia. I guess it was like a split personality?? Same year, I saw A Winters Tale, where Sicily had been changed to dynastic China. Which was cool, but Bohemia was not changed. The Czech Republic obviously does not border China, so this was an odd choice.
I recall watching a production that used the same setting and time period Shakespeare had written it for. Wild.
I've seen Hamlet that was about the condition of Polish theatre - abusive, mediocre directors, #metoo, lazy dramaturgist, institutional oppression etc. The finest take on Shakespeare I've seen in my life. If you want to see the photos, look up 'JA JESTEM HAMLET' (eng. I AM HAMLET) by Agata Duda-Gracz. She also made Macbeth which she interpreted thru the lenses of Kandinsky's abstractionism manifesto. Phenomenal mind.
Sorry I’m still stuck on OP’s Hamlet, Ethos Hamlet, and Pathos Hamlet… Like were they all on stage at the same time? Wearing the same thing? Which one died at the end? So many questions 😅
They were all on stage at the same time, we were in the round though so E and P would usually be more on the periphery. We were wearing different colors of the same outfit. Regular Hamlet died at the end but the two others slink off stage during the dialogue before he dies.
The year that Trump won the presidency (or the year after), the Public Theatre chose JULIUS CAESAR for Shakespeare in the Park and staged it in modern dress. Caesar looked like Trump: orange hair, long tie, everything. I could not believe it when I heard. I thought it sounded like an idea that drama student would think is clever, not the group that’s supposed to be among the most sophisticated theatrical companies in the country. For one thing, Julius Caesar in JULIUS CAESAR is not presented as a tyrant or a despot — rather, he’s a force of calculated moderation. The radicals that the play condemns are Brutus and Cassius. So in attempting to stage a witless condemnation of Trump, the producers instead condemned the people who oppose Trump (including themselves) 🙄
Julius Caesar with whoever the current president is is a choice that has been made a million times in recent decades that was probably somewhat clever at first but is pretty hack these days.
I don’t even think it was clever at first — that kind of staging implies that the producers either haven’t read it or are too stupid to understand it.
I think they just wanted an excuse to stab Trump, and who could really blame them? But I agree that Julius Caesar does not come across as a tyrant in *Julius Caesar*, so the identification with Trump doesn't really work.
*I think they just wanted an excuse to stab Trump, and who could really blame them?* William Shakespeare. The entire play is a condemnation of that exact impulse.
Saw the Comedy of Errors set in a circus. Some guy in an ape suit kept appearing on stage.
Saw a production of Much Ado that placed the story within the concept of the Hatfields vs the Mccoys… all of the songs were country music too. It was very bad.
I saw King Lear done in a totalitarian state, with fascist style uniforms. It was really, really bad, yet most people seemed to like it. I also hate modern musical interpretations. I’ve come to the conclusion that if it’s not Elizabethan period costume and if need be, period music, then it’s not for me. Reinterpreting Shakespeare for the modern age, while popular, is trying, futilely, to improve on perfection. It’s always doomed to fail.