Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:00 PM

We watched Olivier's and Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing this weekend, and I made further observations that I wanted to share. But to prevent Shakespeare from taking over my journal, I've created a separate page to write about Shakespearean issues. I may move some older journal entries there, and definitely have more I want to say in the future.

Not much else going on here: mostly job hunting and financial minutia interspersed with pleasure reading. Minority Report is playing at the second run theater, and I think we're going to see that this afternoon.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 AM

Ouch; bad editing:

A Boston Herald article refers to some people speaking "pigeon sign language"

Arrgh! The word is pidgin, pidgin, pidgin!

That's just plain embarrassing. And neither the author nor copyeditor noticed this bird-brained error? How can newspapers get away with something so sloppy?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Okay, this is just wrong:

You may know that Leonard Nimoy recorded a version of "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."
Did you know that there was a music video?
And that it's available online?

You can watch it at http://www.ntk.net/2002/08/02/baggins.mov if you dare...

I'll warn you in advance, I laughed so hard that tears ran down my cheeks and I could barely focus on the screen. However, Ian suffered SAN damage: he was actually twitching in horror for at least thirty minutes, and it gave him dizzy spells that lasted for several hours.

Dayumn, but they had good drugs in those days. It's on par with anything Sid and Marty Krofft ever produced.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 PM

Awww...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:00 PM

Woo-hoo!

I just completed my hundredth book for the year!

And the library just phoned to say that another book I had requested, Cold fire by Tamora Pierce, is now available.

Did I mention (or need to) that I love books?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:11 PM

Much ado about Shakespeare:

BTW, for anyone in the Boston area who's interested, the New England Shakespeare Company will be performing As You Like It for free in Salem Commons on Weds, Aug. 14 and in Newburyport on Thursday the 15th (when we plan to see it). Their gimmick is that they perform the plays using the original period methods. In other words, each actor only gets a "cue-script which contained only an actor's own lines plus the last three words of his cues." They only rehearse fights, dances and songs, with no other direction. This sounds really cool; and almost improv-like. And I love As You Like It, so I'm really looking forward to it!

Meanwhile, Shakespeare & Company, out in Lenox, MA (the other side of the state) is performing Henry VI in two parts. Unfortunately, they're not free, not local, and never show both parts on the same day -- the best is two consecutive days, and I don't think I can afford that right now. <pout>

I've come to realize that I really love Shakespeare, despite what I was taught in school. Maybe I'm not up on the latest in teaching methods, but I think that way I was taught Shakespeare in the 1980s wasn't the greatest (and I'm regretting the college-level Shakespeare class as well). There's so much conveyed in performance that you can't get reading the plays slowly privately or in a classroom setting. I think students would be much better served by watching the plays and then reading and discussing them, rather than the other way around. Teach the kids more about Elizabethan/Jacobean England, so they can recognize the resonances, and teach them some of the period slang so they'll get the in-jokes (any mention of horns (which seem to appear in every play) are puns referring to cuckolds)

There seems to be a common belief that Shakespeare is suitable for all ages (see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's FAQ, which only warns about the fight scene), when there's some pretty raunchy humor in there. I was frankly shocked at how many small children I saw at the Publick's As You Like It -- that play is raunchy! For example:

I mean, what do you think those lines refer to?

And once you know that Ganymede, the "male" name that Rosalind assumes as her disguise, is period slang for "young gay male," it adds a whole new resonance to the scenes where she asks Orlando to pretend (s)he's female and woo her.

But there's this public perception that Shakespeare is high-brow and family friendly (except perhaps for Titus) so parents bring their kids to the shows without any advance explanation and bore them to pieces, furthering the perception that Shakespeare is out-of-touch. I don't know what the answer is. Maybe we should treat Shakespeare as forbidden fruit -- "you're not old enough to understand this" -- and give kids the subversive thrill of self-discovery. Or maybe, instead of teaching kids the tragedies in public schools -- Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth and Julius Caesar -- start kids on the comedies. Delight the children with Bottom wearing a donkey's head and Pyramus & Thisbe. Or even skip the reading of entire plays, and just pick out some of the more entertaining and accessible scenes to engender a love of wordplay (the tennis puns in Henry V, for example).

Ah well, I'm rambling... Any other thoughts on any of this? I'd love to hear your comments...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 AM

Small pleasures, small pleasures; who would deny us these?

So, this is what I did over the weekend:

• Saturday, I went to Cambridge Public Library for Firestorm at Peshtigo. Since I had to check the online catalog for where it was shelved, I thought I'd look up a couple other books I've been looking for. I was in luck -- someone had just returned one of their copies of Coraline (they have seven; all the rest are out)! Needless to say, I snapped it up. I know some people may disparage the Cambridge Public Library, but whoever's responsible for their SF collection is amazing! They've got some pretty rare books (Point of hopes by Melissa Scott) and many other titles that I haven't seen in any other public library.
• I then headed to the Boston Common to figure out exactly where they're performing the free Shakespeare. It turns out that this afternoon was Henry V, and Much Ado is Sunday afternoon. I didn't want to spoil the play, since I intended to see it with Ian, so I wandered over to the Frog Pond, took off my shoes and splashed across it. I sat down for a bit on the curb to read, dangling my feet in the water. It was really nice.
• An afternoon nap, a phone call from Ian, some reading, a sushi dinner at the little hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurant by City Hall (which serves exquisite food!), and then home again until Ian returned.
• Sunday, Ian and I snuggled, read the Globe and watched the travel programs on PBS (one on London, the other Paris); I dropped Ian off at his game and managed to find a parking spot adjacent to Boston Common. I watched about the first half-hour of Much Ado but it was just too hot outside to stay.
• So I headed home to relax a bit. I packed a picnic basket with pita bread, hummus, guacamole, some cookies and several bottled waters, picked up Ian at 5:30, and we headed back to the Common. This time I didn't bother looking for parking (I had noticed most of the meters reverted to residential at 6pm) and went to the Garage.
• I had read on their LiveJournals that two close friends were also going to see Henry V, so I kept an eye out for them. Unfortunately, we hadn't managed to connect beforehand so I didn't know how many were in their party and couldn't save them a place.
• Still, all-in-all a good play. Ian had neither seen nor read Henry V before, and it's always fun watching the play through somebody else's eyes. At the intermission, Ian commented that it was hard to watch because he didn't really like any of the characters, and the war was unjustified on either side. [He wishes to clarify that he doesn't believe that was accidental on Shakespeare's part or a weakness in the play.] I had only seen the Branagh movie and hadn't read the play, and the CMC made some different directorial choices, including many scenes that Branagh cut. [Check out FilmShakespeare.org for an interactive comparison of the editorial choices of Branagh, Olivier and the BBC productions.]
       The critics (Globe and Phoenix) didn't seem to care so much for the show, and I agree that this Hal felt a little lightweight compared to Branagh's robust performance, but I think that was done on purpose. The CMC decided to perform this play after September 11th, figuring that the notion of a former-playboy on the throne taking his nation into war to avenge his father's losses might have certain resonance... I loved the framing device, a bomb shelter during the London Blitz, with the chorus telling the story to a small boy. And, as always, the wooing of Katherine ends the play on a happy, laughing note. [Ian pointed out that this must've been written at a time when England was allied with France against Spain, so the play had to end with a reconciliation, rather than concluding with the battle.]
• We gave our friends a ride home, getting a little turned around due to insufficiently-signed Big Dig detours (Laugh line during the drive: "Don't you know that every time they put a sign up in Boston, Gd kills a kitten?" That would explain a lot). After that, we stopped at the grocery store to buy ingredients for Igor Bars, which Ian plans to make for tonight's RPG game.

All-in-all, a very good weekend, inexpensive and refreshing.

Oh, and by the way: Get a free Lord of the Rings DVD for test-driving a Kia!