Much Ado About Nothing

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http://www.mwacc.com/WTC-TNT-ADO.html

Shakespeare’s title is as witty and profound as the play it describes. Who is not at their most foolish when in love and at the same time suffers most pain? This sparkling comedy seems light as a feather until it plunges to earth and reveals the darker side of passion – treachery, jealousy and death itself overwhelm frivolity and tragedy threatens. Then Shakespeare changes gear and brings in the clowns – a magnificent gang of incompetent policemen save the day – and, with the aid of deception – love triumphs. This is probably Shakespeare’s finest comic plot and introduces two of his finest lovers: Benedick and Beatrice – each masters of wit who discover the limits of that wit. Here is Shakespeare’s genius – the play itself explores the boundaries of comedy while its two chief characters discover a depth of feeling beyond the dry humour with which they protect their hearts. Cupid triumphs with an arrow not a smile.

Around the two famous lovers gather a lively crew of doting fathers, evil brothers, match-making noblemen, passionate girls and lusty youths – not to mention bumbling policemen and an evil villain who lies in order to destroy love. A whirlwind of romance turns into a whirlpool of violence and death. But all is redeemed and love triumphs. Was the story truly on of much ado about very little or is it revealed as a profound mirror of the most intense human experience: the giving of one to another?

The production is brought to you by TNT theatre Britain who give more performances in more countries than any other touring theatre company in the world. The plays always include live music, the score for MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Is composed and adapted by Paul Flush and will mix Mozart with a dash of jazz. The style of production will be fast furious and funny, with a careful attention to poetry. The company aim to reveal Shakespeare not impose some artificial director’s interpretation – to elucidate this great play not drop it in some pointless setting or update what needs no modernising. This is the real thing – not a museum piece but a vibrant classic that stands the test of time. TNT are the most popular foreign theatre company in China, and have been touring to China since regularly since 2005. Previous productions include HAMLET MACBETH THE TAMING OF THE SHREW GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, ROMEO AND JULIET and THE CANTERVILLE GHOST. Venus range from three productions at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing to a co-production in Mandarin at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (Taming of the Shrew set in 1930’s Shanghai), we perform in theatres universities and colleges across the country from the main cities to towns where no foreign theatre company has performed before – from Shenzen to Tianjin and from Ningbo to Chengdu. Once again the production is directed by Paul Stebbings and produced by Grantly Marshall.

Director’s Notes

Much Ado About Nothing throws down a challenge to the audience with its very title.  What is this play? A comedy that is not always funny? A tragedy with a happy ending? A thriller even? Or is it a masque: that strange mix between symbolic drama and  dance theatre that was to overwhelm English theatre a few years after Shakespeare’s death.  I think the answer is yes to all these questions – MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING defies categorisation but at the same time it reveals Shakespeare’s genius. We are used to thinking that tragedy is more profound than comedy, but Shakespeare balanced  the comic with the tragic,  he knew that profoundest truths are often revealed through laughter – which is a human emotion than no animal can express – whereas sorrow is not so unique. Shakespeare knew that tragedy is enhanced by comedy and vica versa. It is perhaps that  presence of comedy in his tragedies that takes them to the peak of human achievement; for surely the gravedigger in HAMLET, the Fool in KING LEAR and the Porter in MACBETH are essential to these iconic masterpieces. The later Shakespeare abandons tragedy altogether, surely believing that tragic-comedy is the most perfect mirror of the  human condition.  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is part of a long tradition of dark English humour that starts with Chaucer and continues to this day – Dickens, Wilde, Charlie Chaplin and Beckett all contributed to the genre and Beckett’s  famous line: “Fail, try again, fail better” is clearly related to the glorious title of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.  Love and life are never darker than when they are held to be nothing.

Our approach to the play is to try and explore its extremes, not to flatten it by making its conflicting moods and fast changing values into one harmonious whole. This is a baroque masterpiece not a social documentary or romantic comedy. Shakespeare alerts us to this with his setting (or lack of it).  It seems Don Pedro is Spanish,  Claudio is Italian,  while Dogberry and maybe Beatrice are clearly English. Hero seems to  be lifted from  the classics and to behave as such, (that is from the poems of “Hero and Leander” etc). There is a battle but no one gets hurt. There is an evil villain but he disappears half way through the play. There are whole scenes where nothing actually happens – such as the brilliant scene where Dogberry’s Watch fail to tell Leonato of the evil plot.   So our approach has been to let all these elements co-exist as Shakespeare probably intended. We have not sunk to the easy director’s trick of setting the play in a consistent time and place – why is this so popular? This play is clearly not set anywhere. We accept this in Baroque painting why not in theatre? And here is a key – the classical world offered the Baroque artist an alternative universe. So our approach is to embrace the baroque, with all its exaggerations and super-realism. This allows the play to breathe (we feel) and allows us to be grotesque – a key word for TNT theatre – and we think for Shakespeare.  Besides, the Baroque was entertainment, a release from Christian art and a lot of fun. This is a comedy where the audience is supposed to laugh.

Shakespeare Reveries

Event information

Event name:Shakespeare Reveries

Host:Beijing International Theatre Experience (BITE)

Event type: Other – Theater

Location:35 Dongmianhua Hutong

Time & Place

Date:April 15, 2010

Time:19:30 – 21:30

Neighbourhood:Dongcheng District

Phone:13520450019

E-mail:beijingtheatre@gmail.com

Event Description

Shakespeare Reveries

April 15-18, 7:30pm
Penghao Theatre, 35 Dongmianhua Hutong, 64006452
Tickets: 80/100/120 (student/advance/door)
www.beijinghomedelivery.com/shakespearereveries.html
BITE: 13911565014, beijingtheatre@gmail.com

Continuing its tradition of excellent Off Broadway theatre productions such as the Pultizer prize-winning play Wit, the gritty American drama Orphans, and its bilingual staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Beijing International Theatre Experience (BITE) is again setting imaginations afire in Beijing.

Imported from New York City’s International FRINGE Festival and now premiering at Beijing’s hutong-turned-stage Penghao Theatre, Shakespeare Reveries is an original, improvised theatrical celebration such as you’ve never seen before.

So What Is ‘Shakespeare Reveries?’
New York’s OOBR theatre magazine describes this uncharted journey through Shakespeare’s many worlds as “gloriously ludicrous…thoroughly entertaining…the feeling of a dream…in which familiar elements jostle together in unexpected but fascinating ways.”

In Shakespeare Reveries, all the characters and stories of Shakespeare’s plays come to life all of them!! The bawdy and belligerent, the murderous and merry, the triumphant and tragic all collide and coalesce in an exciting evening of improvisation that draws audiences into Shakespeare’s worlds and all the infinite possibilities that arise therein.

“Play with your fancies, and in them behold!”

How might the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream do battle with the wicked spirits of Macbeth? What happens when Romeo steps out of an orchard in Verona to court the wizard’s daughter of The Tempest? How might Petruchio enlist the help of Benedick in his Taming of the Shrew? By what audacity would an actor cradle the head of an audience member and address him as Yorick? Or brush the cheek of a fair maiden to woo her with a love sonnet? Anything can happen and will, when actors and audience have the entire Shakespearean lexicon at their disposal!

China Daily (Oct. 20, 2009) praised ‘…Reveries’ for opening up “unimaginable facets of Shakespearean rhetoric by rearranging the sequence, borrowing across plays, and playing across genders.” Moreover, Chinese subtitles are included to give audiences a new gateway into the timeless wonders of the Bard.

Shakespeare Reveries, led by British-actor-turned-Beijing-resident Ian Reed, represents a bold and innovative step for English-language theatre in Asia. This April, enjoy the magical and unforgettable evening at hand, and see “what dreams may come” when we enter the world of Shakespeare Reveries!

Oh Romeo, my heart is all a-Twitter about Bard’s mobile text

Charlotte Wakefield is Juliet and James Barrett is Romeo in Such Tweet Sorrow

Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent

The Royal Shakespeare Company is presenting Romeo and Juliet today as never before — or should that be “b4”?

Starting this morning for the next five weeks, a cast of six will perform the Bard’s romance in real time via the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The audience is potentially global, but it will have nothing like the thrilling physicality of Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1935 Romeo or the richly nuanced diction of the future Dame Judi Dench’s Juliet in 1960 to latch on to.

Instead, they will discover this latest pair of star-cross’d lovers through a stream of postings 140 characters or less, relayed to their computers from the actors’ mobile phones.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is presenting Romeo and Juliet today as never before — or should that be “b4”?

Starting this morning for the next five weeks, a cast of six will perform the Bard’s romance in real time via the micro-blogging site Twitter.

The audience is potentially global, but it will have nothing like the thrilling physicality of Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1935 Romeo or the richly nuanced diction of the future Dame Judi Dench’s Juliet in 1960 to latch on to.

Instead, they will discover this latest pair of star-cross’d lovers through a stream of postings 140 characters or less, relayed to their computers from the actors’ mobile phones.

 http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article7094756.ece

William Shakespeare’s lost 18th Century play Double Falsehood ‘not a hoax’

A painting of William Shakespeare which is believed to be the only authentic image of Shakespeare made during his life

It may be a case of all’s well that ends well, or simply much ado about nothing, but an academic claims to have solved a mystery which intrigued Shakespeare scholars for hundreds of years.
 
By Nick Britten, and Richard Alleyne
An 18th-century drama attributed to the Bard but dismissed as a hoax, truly is his work, according to an expert in the literature of the time.

Double Falsehood, published by Lewis Theobald in 1728, is a version of Shakespeare’s long-lost play Cardenio, he believes.
The original was a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher, his successor as house playwright to the King’s Men company. It was performed twice in 1613 but never made it into print and was lost to history.

Theobald claimed, more than a century later, to have had three copies of the play, which were also subsequently lost, on which he based his adaptation.

Double Falsehood was declared a hoax soon after it opened and disappeared, although Theobald became a famous editor of the playwright.

However, after 10 years’ research, Brean Hammond, professor of Modern English Literature at Nottingham University, believes he has found proof of its authenticity from historical evidence and analysis of the text.

“It’s impossible to compare Double Falsehood with Cardenio because those manuscripts have been lost,” he said.

“But if you look inside the text there is the presence of three hands at work, Shakespeare, his collaborator John Fletcher and Theobald.”

Some words in Double Falsehood were not in any of Theobald or Fletcher’s other works, he said.

“A small example is the word ‘absonant’ which appears in the first act of Double Falsehood. It means displeasing to the ear, harsh or discordant.

“This word does not appear in Theobald or Fletcher’s work but it does appear to be a word that was invented by Shakespeare.”

In the play, Henriquez, a noble, tries to ruin a young girl named Violante. He then tries to seduces Leonora, the intended of his friend Julio.

Ultimately he gets his “comeuppance”, Prof Hammond said.

As a result of his research, Theobald’s adaptation is to be published in the Arden Shakespeare series and the Royal Shakespeare Company is working towards a conjectural reconstruction of the original.

Prof Jonathan Bate, of Warwick University, says on this page that the research “proves that it is in some part Shakespearean”.

Stanley Wells, general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare series was less excited. He said: “There’s more reason to believe that the play preserves bits of Fletcher than Shakespeare. However, there might be a bit of Shakespearean DNA in it.”

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7450874/Shakespeare-18th-Century-work-Double-Falsehood-is-his-lost-play.html

Event

Dumpling-making lessons

Chopsticks cafe and bar offers cooking lessons to tourists who want to learn how to prepare Chinese dishes. It also explains the culture and history behind the food. Participants will learn how to make a variety of dishes, including dumplings, an all-time favorite.

Where: Chopsticks cafe and bar, 12 Yandaixie Jie, Di’anmen Wai Dajie, Xicheng DistrictWhen: Monday – ThursdayCost: 100 yuan per person (maximum of three per class)
Tel: 6402 8988

Child’s world of Shakespeare

US director and actor Joseph Graves performs a self-written monologue. The piece, based on personal experience, explores the comical stories of a 6-year-old boy and his thoughts about Shakespeare.

Where: Penghao Theater, 35 Dongmianhua Hutong (off Nan Louguxiang), Dongcheng District
When: December 25-26, 7:30-9 pm
Tel: 6400 6452
Cost: 120 yuan

Argentinean tango

This evening, Camila Tango Salon is holding a culture party and open class in its new venue at SOHO New Town. Juan Manuel Rosales, an Argentinean tango master, will give free lessons. Afterwards, he will talk about the essence of tango culture and his take on the dance.

Where: Room 604, Building 6, SOHO New Town, Xi Dawang Lu, Chaoyang District
When: December 25, 8-11 pm
Tel: 8552 5228 (for inquiries and reservations)
Cost: Free (spend at least 40 yuan on drinks)

8th Red Bull Nanshan Open national qualifier

Tomorrow, local snowboarders will be pushing their limits in an attempt to qualify for the 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open, the country first major snowboarding contest. Snowboarders of every nationality, age and level are welcome to participate.

The Quiksilver Nanshan Mellow Park will host the qualifier, which will select six snowboarders who will move on to the 8th Red Bull Nanshan Open to be held January 9 to 10 next year. The top four winner will also receive cash rewards. Up for grabs too are prizes from Quiksilver, Dakine and Nike 6.0 for categories such as Brightest Outfit and Oldest Rider.

Where: Quiksilver Nanshan Mellow Park, Nanshan Ski Village, Miyun County
When: December 26, 9 am – 3 pm
Web: mellowparks.cn

(By Wei Ying)

Shakespeare’s shrew returns to China after two decades

By He Jianwei

Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet will stage in Beijing next monthThe Taming of the Shrew, first performed in China 22 years ago.

The Shakespeare comedy, which will be presented in two acts, is choreographed by South African John Cranko, who brought his Prince of the Pagodas to Stuttgart on his initial visit in 1960. He stayed for three years in the southern German city to nurture a troupe that has since become the country’s finest classical dance company.

When Cranko became Stuttgart Ballet’s director in 1961, a new phase in the company’s history began. The choreographer also renewed andedefined the genre of full-length narrative ballets with his productions of Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew and Aleksandr Pushkin’sOnegin. Dancers worldwide covet a leading role in one of these ballets.

Cranko version of The Shrew, which premiered in 1969, tells through subtle gestures Petruchio’s taming of Kathrina, while keeping Shakespeare’s wit and melodic prose. It also incorporates the irony found in the English playwright’s text as the stormy, ever-changing relationship between Katherina and Petruchio unfolds.

Katherina, an intelligent and outspoken woman, is thought to be a shrew because she resents the special attention men give her empty-headed and vain sister Bianca. Petruchio marries her for her money and then sets out to win her heart by plotting to gain her submission.

In the first part of the story, Katherina is the more dominant character while Petruchio is the suitor. In the second, he becomes the more dominant person; she the obedient wife. In the end, they find balance and true love.

The ballet’s triumphant taming scene, with its humor and delirious body movements, is one of the drama’s highsBut the question of who really tames who remains unresolved at the final curtain. The Shrew is one story that tickles the funny bone while at the same time touching the heart.

Stuttgart Ballet: The Taming of the Shrew
Where: Opera House of the National Center for the Performing Arts, 2 Xi Chang’an Jie, XichengDistrict
When: October 9-11, 7:30 pm
Admission: 120-600 yuan
Tel: 6655 0000

Helen: Shakespeare’s Globe, review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/5978276/Helen-Shakespeares-Globe-review.html
Helen at Shakespeare’s Globe is a genre-busting drama of great panache.
 
By Charles Spencer
Euripides wrote Helen two and a half millennia ago, in 412BC when he was about 70 years old. In Frank McGuinness’s colloquial new translation it seems one of the most topical and engaging plays on the London stage. The ability of the ancient Greeks to speak to us directly across such great chasms of time is one of the great wonders of the theatre.

Scholars have long argued about what kind of play Helen actually is: a comedy, a tragedy, a romance? Let’s just say it’s a genre-busting drama of great panache, often reminiscent of such late Shakespearean plays as The Winter’s Tale and Pericles.

Euripides’s initial premise is daring, even outrageous. Helen, for whom the Trojan War was so bloodily fought, never actually went to the topless towers of Ilium, never betrayed her husband Menelaus. The gods wafted her in a cloud to safety to Egypt and created a simulacrum of the most beautiful woman in the world for Paris to abduct and take home to Troy. Meanwhile the real Helen has been waiting for 17 long and faithful years to be reunited with her husband.

Euripides was writing a year after Athens had suffered a disastrous defeat during the Peloponnesian Wars. And when an old soldier concludes here that he has fought for “an illusion, a dream… we fought the Trojan War for nothing”, a modern audience can’t help but be reminded that we fought the recent war in Iraq over Saddam’s equally illusory WMDs.

Some may find McGuinness’s translation too free. A gatekeeper tells Menelaus “No dogs, No Greeks – f*** off, foreign bastard”, but there are also passages of more lofty blank verse, and the modernity and irreverent wit suits the play.

Deborah Bruce’s production, set in an Egyptian graveyard, deftly combines ancient and modern, the serious and the frivolous, and the evening is powered by a terrific performance from Penny Downie as a tousled, flame-haired Helen who takes the audience into her confidence in a series of soliloquies, memorably announcing at the start: “My name is Helen – Helen of Egypt.”

Downie brings a delicious mixture of sexuality, glamour and wit to the stage, while also movingly suggesting a woman who remains deeply in love with her husband. Her description of bathing the bedraggled, shipwrecked Menelaus and delighting in his smell is at once erotic and touching, and one rejoices that despite the play’s tragic, death-haunted background, it moves towards a happy ending.

In this continuously alert and stylish staging, there’s a countertenor in a white tuxedo among the bedraggled chorus of peasant slaves, and an outstanding performance from Paul McGann, who beautifully captures the wonder of a battered old cuckold unexpectedly recovering both his love and his dignity. There’s also a delicious comic turn from Rawiri Paratene as the plump, lustful and hilariously stupid Egyptian king who has the hots for Helen but is ingeniously tricked into allowing her to escape.

This rare revival of an undervalued classic proves the jewel in the Globe’s crown this season.

Tickets: 0844 579 1940

Telegraph rating: * * * *

Theater review: ‘As You Like It’ at Shakespeare Festival/LA

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/theater-review-as-you-like-it-at-shakespeare-festivalla.html
Of all of Shakespeare’s comedies, “As You Like It” might just be the most difficult to follow. The comedy of romance and mistaken identity contains cross-dressing, character doubling and a fly-by gallery of supporting clowns whose paths intersect with a velocity that can make your head spin.

The New York-based Aquila Theatre, in residence at the Shakespeare Festival/LA, mischievously seeks to compound rather than simplify the confusion by having actors take on multiple roles in Russian-doll fashion. But instead of frustrating the viewer, this finely acted production succeeds at creating a pleasantly tipsy experience as it merrily toys with the fluidity of identity. 

Set on a mostly bare stage, the Aquila’s modern-dress interpretation takes a few liberties with Shakespeare’s text, most noticeably in the beginning when the actors (playing themselves) perform a prologue set to music. Rosalind (Leandra Ashton) is a French nobleman’s daughter who falls for Orlando (Richard Kidd), a moody young man from a rival clan. A series of arguments and misunderstandings leads to the exile of most of the main characters to the Forest of Arden, where they become unmoored from their former identities and engage in covert games of romantic hide-and-seek.

“One man plays many parts,” says a character midway through the play, and indeed this production holds true to that edict by having most of the cast play multiple roles or play characters who assume multiple identities. Rosalind disguises herself as a man named Ganymede with the help of her saucy cousin Celia (Vaishnavi Sharma), who assumes the identity of a servant. The rest of the cast fills out the supporting ranks, with some actors taking on as many as eight parts.

The discombobulation is deliberate and largely successful thanks to laser-sharp acting from a seven-member cast called on to bring to life 20 characters. The best performances come from the actresses, who deliver their lines with clarity and unforced charm. As Rosalind, Ashton is superb in a famously difficult role, rendering her character’s long-winded repartee with a seeming ease that is coupled with spot-on physical comedy. And Lucy Black, who plays a gallery of supporting roles of both genders, deserves special recognition for her versatility that never feels ostentatious or self-congratulatory.

Kenn Saberton’s direction doesn’t always manage to untangle the play’s knotty twists and turns, but it succeeds in finding the right balance between comedy and melancholy while implicitly acknowledging that the two are joined at the hip. Those ambiguous moments are best encapsulated in a series of songs performed on guitar by Damian Davis, who casts the theatrical equivalent of an autumnal sigh over the play.

“As You Like It” isn’t an easy comedy to embrace for either the audience or the cast. The Aquila’s superb production makes the challenge feel worthwhile and exceptionally rewarding.

“As You Like It.” The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, 555 W. Temple St., Los Angeles. 8 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. (Also at South Coast Botanic Garden, 26300 Crenshaw Blvd., Palos Verdes Estates. 8 p.m. July 23-26.) $15-$23 (plus a limited number of free tickets).  www.freewillLA.org. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.