Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:59 AM

Fascinating.

While googling for on The Jew of Malta, I happened to notice this as the top "ad" in the sponsored link on the right column of the page.

Reading Google's article at the link, it seems to specifically target the "Jew" rather than other potentially offensive results. [An issue that arose in early 2004, which I blogged here and here.]

Furthermore, the search I was conducting didn't return anything remotely disturbing -- at least not on the first screen or two.

More curiously, subsequent searches on the term and my own attempts to demonstrate this on Ian's machine did not return this "ad" So I wonder whether it's putting down some kind of cookie to display it only the once.

[Fortunately, I thought ahead and made a screencap.]

I just thought this was interesting and wanted to see if others had experienced this or knew of similar Google peccadillos.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:44 AM

A commenter to my LiveJournal feed said he saw both current TFANA plays, and wrote:

I had a more favorable reaction to The Jew of Malta than these reviewers did. The director was definitely inclined towards absurdity, emphasizing the over-the-top nature of the story, but I don't think that's an invalid choice—I've seen excellent productions of Hamlet that were even sillier. And both productions earned high marks for good acting and clear speech. On a scale of 1 to 10, where I hardly ever give anything a 10, I'd say The Merchant of Venice was a 9 and The Jew of Malta an 8. I'm very glad I made a special trip to New York just to see them.

Which once again raises the question of whether or not I go see them.

$65 a ticket times two plays (Malta and Merchant) times two people (assuming Ian will also attend) plus transportation to New York City and a meal between the shows...

It's not a minor undertaking...

Anybody else see the plays yet? Any other reviews you can point me towards, whether in print or from individual blogs?

If we do go to see the plays, anybody care to join us?

I'm thinking about Saturday the 24th of February, since Ian won't have tp teach Sunday school the following day.

PS: Upon showing Ian this post, he thinks I should definitely see Malta, at least, because he got the impression the other reviewers didn't have the background to know what Malta is.

"They apparently think that a play in which the main character murders an entire convent with a rice pudding is supposed to be serious and dignified."

I guess that answers that question. :)

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:01 PM

I started a new workout this week (designed for me by a trainer at the Y).

I'm currently looking up computer figure modellers because the online exercise instructions I've found so far (such as health24.com and exrx.net) don't quite have all the poses I need...

I just downloaded MakeHuman; we'll see if that does what I want...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:54 PM

By the way, for those of you asking about Boopsie, Ian's blogged the latest info from the vet:

So, the Boop's thyroid is high, so we're upping her thyroid medication. Hyperthyroidism is very common among geriatric cats, but the medication is reasonably cheap, so that's okay. She does have an infection, so we're keeping her on the antibiotics for a while.

And other than that, she seems more-or-less okay. Once we started the antibiotics, she's not pissing inappropriately (knock on wood).

Just to add to this, no crystals in the urine -- apparently, that's not so much a problem for older cats. Also, this is the first time the vet has managed to take a sterile sample of Boopsie's urine, and I think that forced emptying of the bladder may be another reason she hasn't needed to piss so urgently...

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:47 PM

Need a good laugh for the end of the week? How about a threefer of YouTube videos:

1) The music video to Weird Al Yankovic's latest song, "White and Nerdy" which includes Donny Osmond dancing in the background.

2) The first take of Donny Osmond's dancing in front of a green screen to the entire song, uncut. Impressive and funny.

3) The making of the "White and Nerdy" video: At a minimum, catch the excerpt from the 4 minute mark to about 6.5 minutes (2.5 minutes out of 7:22 total) which focuses on Donny Osmond's set visit. Watching Al and Donny react to the playback of #2 is even funnier than the dance routine by itself.

Enjoy!

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:20 PM

While writing my previous post, I happened to check Shakespeare & Co.'s website.

Much to my delight, I discovered they've posted their Summer 2007 schedule.

And, while this run of Merchant may pass sight unseen by me, it looks like I'll finally get my chance to catch Anthony and Cleopatra -- starring Tina Packer and Nigel Gore.

I've already posted the rest of the schedule to Bard in Boston. This suggests that other company's summer schedules should be appearing within the next few weeks. Keep an eye out.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:03 PM

It took me a while, but I finally got around to reading the reviews of TFANA's double-bill -- Marlowe's Jew of Malta paired with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- which I posted the other night:

Mr. Herskovits's decision to treat Marlowe's savagely violent play as an absurdist romp ... toothless staging

— Charles Isherwood for The New York Times
 

In the hands of director David Herskovits, however, Marlowe's blast of comic nihilism degenerates into a skittish, undisciplined grab bag of distracting gimmicks. ... TFANA's "Malta" is as distracted as its "Merchant" is incisive. Mr. Beatty's cartoonish "Malta" set could belong to a life-size Punch-and-Judy show, and Mr. Herskovits brings a similar level of subtlety to the play. [... W]hat begins as a handful of attention-getting but plausible directorial flourishes gradually devolves into a stylistic free-for-all.

— Eric Grode in The New York Sun
 

"Jew of Malta" has been dumbed down and hoked up in what appears to be an intentionally horrible, sophomoric, smart-aleck deconstruction by David Herskovitz.

— Linda Winer of Newsday
 

[D]irector David Herskovits opts almost solely for laughs in this crude, cartoonish version

— Michael Kuchwara Associated Press
 

buffoonishly clunky [... I]t seems as if Herskovits, who often employs carnival look in his productions, has decided to throw up his hands and spoof the whole enterprise.

— David Finkle with TheaterMania
 

<expletive deleted>

I'd really been looking forward to seeing Jew of Malta.

I enjoyed it when I read it, and frankly I never thought I'd see it staged in my lifetime, much less with someone like F. Murray Abraham in the lead.

But with reviews like these, looks like I'm going to have to wait a while longer.

Sure, his Merchant is getting raves, but frankly I'm less interested in that than I am in Malta.

How can I convince a theater company to take this seriously; even if it's just a staged reading/workshopping as Shakespeare & Co. did with Othello a few seasons back...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:10 PM

One of my recurring whims is to host a Marlowe-themed meal, serving dishes mentioned or alluded to in Marlowe's writing.

These would include:

• A dish of sweet ripe grapes as described in Faustus:

  This makes me wonder more than all the rest, that at this time of the year, when every tree is barren of his fruit, from whence you had these ripe grapes.
  And trust me, they are the sweetest grapes that e'er I tasted.

• Sweet honeyed bliss comes from lovers throughout the works.
   
• Edward II bears responsibility for the fish course, served alongside skewered fruit.
   
• Mutton and lamb from the Passionate Shepherd.
   
• From Ovid, we get corn and apples and nuts, and the poet is also generally associated with goats.
   
• Jew of Malta will be represented by "Spanish oils and wines of Greece," sack and muscadine to drink, and a hot oil fondue.

Of course, the meal will be followed by backgammon and the traditional bloody argument over the bill.

Any further suggestions for such a feast?

Or is this just too tasteless for words?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:05 PM

So, after a long workday, it's time for more of the Marlowe birthday celebration.

This year, I've decided to look at Marlowe from a musical bent.

Marlowe's most famous poem is probably the one known as The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, which begins:

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

Sir Walter Raleigh allegedly wrote the poetic response, titled "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" which attempts to force Marlowe's poem into a heterosexual romance. In truth, nothing in the original poem definitively identifies "His Love" as male or female. Gowns and kirtles were still gender-neutral articles of clothing at the time.

But, I digress.

Given the poem's popularity, it's been put to music many many times.

Traditional:

Here are but a few of the recordings I've found on Amazon.com, with audio-snippets of the relevant track where available:

• Treasury of Elizabethan Music -- by John Potter & The Broadside Band  
• Fern Hill -- Composed by Jean Belmont; Conducted by Charles Bruffy  
• William Mayer: Voices from Lost Realms  
• Helene Williams Sings Songs Of Love -- Composed by Leonard Lehrman, Leonard Lehrman, Helen Maria Williams  
• Music To Hear -- Composed by John Rutter; Conducted by Brian Kay  
• Nils Lindberg: O Mistress Mine (A Garland of Elizabethan Poetry) -- Composed by Nils Lindberg; with Martin Best; Conducted by Nils Lindberg
• Shakespeare At Covent Garden / Pickett, Musicians Of The Globe -- Composed by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop; with Philip Pickett, Susan Gritton, Musician of the Globe  
• Popular Tunes in 17th Century England /Broadside Band & Barlow -- by the Broadside Band; Conducted by Jeremy Barlow  
• Chilcot: Songs and Concertos -- Composed by Thomas Chilcot; with Andrew Wilson-Dickson, Charles Daniels, James Ottaway; Conducted by Clare Salaman  
• Fleeting Thoughts: Songs and Chamber Music by Hilary Koprowski -- Composed by Hilary Koprowski
• Shakespeare's Songbook  

Modern:

Now this is what gets my blood flowing:

Richard Loncraine's 1995 film of Richard III (the version starring Ian McKellen) opens to a Big Band -style version composed by Trevor Jones and performed by Stacey Kent and Vile Bodies. Like many of these songs, it concludes with a few verses of the Raleigh.

Annie Lennox recorded it as part of the sonnet collection When Love Speaks.
[She also recorded Cole Porter's "Every Time We Say Goodbye" for Derek Jarman's film of Marlowe's Edward II, making me curious as to her interest in the poet.]

Scouring the web, I found the Celtic folk band Paisley Close covered it on their album All on a Day. You can hear the first 90 seconds (MP3) freely from their website.

Not Marlowe:

For the soundtrack of Valley of the Dolls, Andre Previn wrote a song titled "Come Live With Me" that was allegedly inspired by Marlowe's poem.

Come live with me and be my love
If only for a day...

Likewise, country singer Roy Clark has a song (and album) of the same title, which begins:

Come live with me and be my love
Share my bread and wine
Be wife to me, be life to me, be mine.

But these are not Marlowe's, and thus not what I want.

And that's all I've found so far.

Any others you've heard and care to share?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:44 PM

Web 2.0 is the big buzzword around here.

But what is it?

Via BoingBoing, Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University has created this 4.5 minute video to try to explain its evolution:

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 AM

Thanks all for your concern.

We're taking her to the vet at 9am (and then I'm heading up to work; fortunately I have no morning meetings).

Last night, we let her sleep on the bed for as long as she was snoogling with us. Once she started her nightly wanderings, we locked her in the bathroom so she wouldn't piss on anything.

Ian's off warming up the car right now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:42 AM

Speaking of famous English spies with a gay angle, Erastes posts the following squee-worthy news:

John Gets Bond Gig

It's a long way from kids' telly to Tinseltown, but Doctor Who and Torchwood star John Barrowman, 39, looks set to make the journey. He may have started out on children's show Live and Kicking back in the 90s, but I can reveal that John is about to prove a hit in Hollywood, having bagged a job presenting on E! Entertainment and signing up to front its coverage of the forthcoming Bafta Awards.

Even better, John's role as Captain Jack Harkness has brought him to the attention of the producers of the next James Bond movie. In fact, they want to cast the gay actor as a baddie who tries to seduce the famous spy, played by Daniel Craig. A mole tells me, "He is ideal and we have had dicussions about it. Daniel is up for it, too!" Watch this space...

- New! Magazine - Issue 199

Is this the ship to launch a thousand embraces?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 AM

Just as April 23 is celebrated as Shakespeare's birthday^*, today is the day that popular reckoning honors as Christopher Marlowe's birthday.

^* It's not, necessarily -- it's possible, given the known date of his christening, but only one of several plausible candidates. However, early biographers wanted to link Shakespeare to St George's Day, thus tying the playwright to the patron saint of England.
   Consider this a useful tip for identifying sloppy biographers. If they make unqualified references to Shakespeare's or Marlowe's birthdays, you may want to wonder what other nuances they're sweeping over.

At any rate...

Keeping with the tradition I've established over previous years, I'll honor his birthday by blogging.

For any fellow Marlowe fan who wishes to wear your heart on your sleeve (or other body part), I've created a CafePress shop offering images of the Corpus Christi portrait and asking that fundamental question:

More to come...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:14 PM

via

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:49 PM

Quoting Ian, rather than trying to rewrite it in my own words:

We're not certain it's crystalitis -- that was just an amateur diagnosis via Google, but it seems plausible given the symptoms.

She was pissing pink, straining for a few drops at a time.

Poor baby.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 PM

Oh, and on my way home from Midsummer Night's Dream, I spotted a poster seeking volunteers for a sleep study, emblazoned with a quote from Hamlet:

“For some must watch, while some must sleep”

This just goes to show that all the world's a stage...

...or possibly that Harvard researchers are pretentiously over-educated. ;}

If anyone is interested, contact sleepstudy@bidmc.harvard.edu.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:38 PM

Helena and Hermia.

Why did Shakespeare choose such similar-sounding names for those characters?

Even though I can generally recognize their roles on sight -- the girl everybody loves v. the insecure "spaniel" stalker -- I have trouble keeping straight which name goes with whom until its actually spoken by somebody else in the scene.

And this plays havok with my ability to take notes on what I'm watching.

Anybody have a useful mnemonic for remembering which name goes with which girl?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:25 PM

[Crossposted to Riba Rambles () and bard_in_boston]

After last summer's production of Midsummer Night's Dream in the park, I started to wonder whether I'd overdone it on this play. Maybe this comedy -- which I consider a useful entry point into Shakespeare -- doesn't have the heft to sustain so many viewings.

I'm glad curiousity overcame my ennui, because Boston Theatre Works made me feel seven times lucky.

Audience laughter punctuated the play, and I was definitely grinning throughout the breezy two hour performance.

The production is nowhere near as avant-garde nor fashionista as the ads and early publicity make it seem. The chief conceit is a prime piece of crosscasting.

Paula Plum and Timothy John Smith as Oberon and Titania:

Oberon's (mis)treatment of Titania during the play often evokes a visceral discomfort that can diminish enjoyment of their subplot. And this unfairness is further underscored by the typical doubling of Titania with the conquered war-bride, Hippolita.

Swapping the genders of the fairy queen and king shifted the balance somewhat, allowing a greater appreciation of other aspects of those scenes, without the usual distractions.

Timothy John Smith played Titania with delicate gestures, vulnerable, yet powerful.

Paula Plum was less obviously masculine as Oberon, but that's more a reflection on our societal norms, which permit women more leeway to act male than the other way around.

Their portrayal of the human monarchs, also imbued with innate majesty, might otherwise be unremarkable, but here they further spotlight the interplay between power and gender.

Puck rounds out the fairy court. As I've written before, I prefer an air of malice to the part. [I suspect that's partially Neil Gaiman's influence.] Tall lithe and muscular, clad in sleeveless black, Ben Lambert hares about the stage with a ballet-like grace. He's not quite as unearthly as John Kelly's Cupid in ART's 2005 Dido, but still suitably menacing.

The Mechanicals rehearse Pyramus and Thisbe

Robert Pemberton was exuberantly excessive as Bottom. If Bottom isn't trying to steal the scene, then he's not playing it right. And this Bottom certainly knew how to ham it up. I don't want to give too much away, but brilliant staging of Pyramus' death scene!

The rest of the cast assumed triple roles, wearing black coats for their Athenian garb, work shirts and wellingtons as the mechanicals, and gauzy silk robes to represent fairies. The nametags on the mechanicals' uniforms were a particularly nice touch.

Angie Jepson plays Hermia most sweetly. I was particularly pleased to see a Hermia who was genuinely short in stature, adding meat to the insults about her height. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Hayes initially portrays Helena as alternately pitiful and spiteful. You can sympathize with both girls' distress, although it's mostly played for laughs.

The men play the lovers as typically bold romantics. But it's in their roles as the mechanicals that they really shine. Shelley Bolman assumes a mincing, simpering stance as the meek writer-director Peter Quince (holding the clipboard) that's the total antithesis to his ardent Lysander. Risher Reddick plays Thisby in a broad comic falsetto.

The only downside of all this doubling is that the young lovers' absence from the play-within-a-play cuts some of the snarky conversation.

Like the costumes, the staging is superficially simple: Red flowers spring forth from the floor of the predominantly black theater. A wallclock without hands represents the moon, providing a sense of timelessness. A few bare trees, a platform and a clawfoot tub complete the scenery.

The theater itself is small and intimate -- barely four or five rows of seats on three sides of a thrust stage. Characters (particularly the mechanicals) run up the aisles on several occasions. When Queen Titania complimented Bottom's singing (Act 3, Scene 1), he panicked, fled up the aisle and hid behind my seat. "Don't look at her!" he hissed at me as I tried to stifle my giggles.

Directorial choices helped bring the humor out of the language. With every new production I see, I learn something more -- about the play or about myself. "O spite! O hell!" indeed. I particularly admired the soft sigh as love-in-idleness was applied to each sleeper.

I had a blast, though my tastes may be somewhat jaded. If you're not familiar with the play or comfortable with Shakespeare, this will make a great introduction. And what better way to leave the bitter New England winter behind than a few hours in the warm woods.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Reviews of TFANA's double-bill -- Marlowe's Jew of Malta paired with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- are hitting the press:

• New York Times
• New York Sun
• Newsday
• Associated Press
• TheaterMania

Now I have to decide whether it's worth the time and expense...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 PM

If I were staging The Jew of Malta, which opens in the "counting-house, with heaps of gold" I'd be hard-pressed not to hide a statue of a black falcon among the "infinite riches in a little room."

Damn, now I'm picturing Peter Lorre in the role of Ithamore...

There must be something seriously wrong with me.

Then again, it was famed Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom who confessed:

"I sometimes read through The Jew of Malta, mentally casting Groucho as Barabas."

Gaaah!

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:20 PM

In DC Comics contituity, Wonder Woman is the daughter of the Amazon Queen, Hyppolite.

In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, events are precipitated by the capture and marriage of the Amazon Queen Hippolita by Theseus.

Has anyone written a crossover story, putting DC Comics characters into Shakespeare's plot?

Surely, sometime in the goofier decades of comic book history, somebody must've made the attempt.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:33 PM

It's a bitterly cold day, and I just discovered she pissed on my long underwear...

If I didn't love her so much, she'd be in trouble.

This is yet another account in the continuing adventures involved in living with a geriatric cat.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:05 PM

While browsing Google News for articles of interest, I came upon this Charlotte Observer article on visiting actors from the RSC (nowhere local to me).

In it, actor Lucian Msamati talks about audience interaction, both good and bad:

"The flip side of that, and something which I cannot understand to this day," he says, are the people who bring in copies of the play to read during the show. "You're at a live performance. Why on earth would you have a script?"

Well, as somebody who makes a point of always having the script on-hand when I see Shakespeare, and has actually read along on occasion, let me explain my reasoning.

I don't do this often -- mostly with outdoor productions.

At first, it was because sometimes -- whether it's the fault of the actors or the soundsystem -- the lines can be a little hard to comprehend. Reading along gives a second stream of input to improve understanding.

But more importantly, almost no modern Shakespeare company performs the plays uncut. They trim here and tuck there and rearrange those other scenes... They can even add bits (usually songs, poems, or excerpts from other plays).

Sometimes it's obvious, such as productions of Love's Labour's Lost which replace swathes of dialog with songs. [Not just Branagh; I've also seen other productions that do this.] Other times it's less noticeable, unless you're already familiar with the play and happen to miss a particular set piece. But mostly the process is nearly invisible. When ASP hosted their Hamlet conversations, with members of three different companies acting out scenes, I followed along in the text. And sometimes changes were as short as a word or partial line.

Here's an example I blogged about a production of Midsummer Night's Dream:

in the original, Lysander says:

...therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee

They trimmed it down to

...therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee

They cut the fact she's rich, childless and adores Lysander, but that still gets the important gist across, which is that he has a relative outside Athenian jurisdiction where they can flee.

At any rate, I find that fascinating.

To look at the play and see what this company considered essential. How they tweak the text to evoke a particular aspect of the story or character.

I often wish I could afford to see each production twice, once for the show, and the second time seated in the back row to just listen and read along.

Because how else can one glean this information?

You can't actually purchase the edited text from modern companies. They mostly just buy cheap copies of the standard text and mark them up. So your only hope of studying these choices is by reading along.

[That's one thing you have to respect about the "bad old days" of the Restoration through David Garrick. Sure, nobody saw Shakespeare unadulterated, but at least the theaters published their adaptations so later historians could study how Shakespeare was performed.]

Does that make more sense?

And speaking of Shakepeare, I've got to get dressed and off to today's show.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 AM

From Mark Evanier:

There's a Broadway show currently playing called The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. As part of each performance, at least one person is summoned out of the audience to become a participant in the on-stage spelling competition and whenever possible, it's a celebrity.

At the January 30 performance, one of the audience members who was dragged up on stage was Julie Andrews, and they gave her a word that she had to spell. The word was "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." To her eternal shame, she got it wrong.

They've made the video available @ Broadway.com, or just watch it streaming here: