Summer may not have officially begun, but its ways and means are well underway.
The bedspread is packed away (the cotton blanket soon to follow), heat naps have become the norm on unbearably sticky afternoons and the 20th annual Richmond Shakespeare Festival is in full swing at Agecroft Hall.
Now, I know that sitting outside in the courtyard of a 500-year old house on a summer night isn't everyone's cup of tea (Pru's complaints run from the humidity to the uncomfortable chairs to the bugs), but for decades, it's been mine.
Don't waste your love on somebody who doesn't value it.
Although my date wasn't technically an Agecroft virgin, it had been enough years since that one long-ago visit (for a party, not a play) to dim its full memory. Right there you know I just have to give him the full experience. Add in the production - "Romeo and Juliet" - and I'm in my element making sure we cover all the bases.
Intermission on the stone terrace, for example. A picnic dinner. The usual.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
We were the first to spread a blanket on the lawn behind the gardens for a picnic with a diminishing view of the James and the bridge. Despite being non-natives, we both extolled the good old days of less verdant trees allowing for wider vistas from the lawn, ending up sounding like old-school Richmonders always assuming the past was better than the present.
Maybe it's something in the humidity.
Did my heart love 'til now?
The costumed young players moved from blanket to blanket, offering up scenes to accompany the al fresco dining going on, and though we never got asked, we had great seats for two scenes from "Taming of the Shrew," a play I inevitably enjoy.
I know, I know, plenty of people take issue with its chauvinistic overtones, but I can overlook that because of Petruchio and Katerina's brilliant dialogue (just as good but without the machismo: Beatrice and Benedick's parrying in "Much Ado About Nothing"). Those two sure can talk.
Under love's heavy burden do I sink.
When it came time to go to the courtyard to find seats, the location was left up to me, presumably the pro. Usually I'm a front row kind of a gal, but at Agecroft, that sometimes makes you part of the show.
I got pulled onstage once and told to scream on cue. I did it several times, but I'm no actress. Better we sit in the second row where we lucked out when no one sat in front of our view. More good first-timer vibes.
'Tis an ill cook that can not lick his own fingers.
I have no idea how many times I've seen "Romeo and Juliet," but a stellar production can still wow me every time. Quill's James Ricks had fashioned a teen-aged love story with equal parts sass and heart. And may I just say how utterly refreshing it is to see a Romeo still within reach of his teen-aged years? Tyler Stevens had the face and voice - not to mention all the young man bravado necessary to woo a major crush - to nail Romeo's youthful/testosterone-fueled exuberance.
Educated men are so impressive!
And don't get me started on Todd Patterson's scene-stealing depiction of the swaggering Mercutio. It was as if David Bowie and Mick Jagger had a love child and he channeled his parents to do Shakespeare (and then maybe bed a wench). Loyal, lascivious and oh-so fluid in his movements. a pity since he dies in the first act.
Seek happy nights to happy days.
Eventually the sun went down, the fireflies came out and both the lovers were dead. Everyone left was devastated. I don't know when I've had such a romantic evening.
Oh, wait, yes I do. Never mind me, that's just a fume of sighs...
Showing posts with label romeo and juliet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romeo and juliet. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Sunday, October 18, 2015
An Afternoon of Woe
I sold Eliza down the river for history and tragedy.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see the 50th anniversary restored print of "My Fair Lady," I did, but I couldn't justify passing up the funniest park ranger ever or an abridged teenage love story for it.
And, just for the record, I did see a movie (several, actually), improbably enough of the Civil War.
Ranger Mike Gorman - one part photography geek, one part dedicated historian and one part stand-up comedian - was giving a talk and slide show entitled "Richmond, 1865." If, like me, you'd attended "Richmond, 1864," you knew there was no funnier or more informative way to spend an hour without alcohol.
What I love about his presentations is that he does all the work while the audience reaps all the fascinating results.
Leading us on a virtual tour of the city using photographs, he zooms in, blows up and points out minute details an amateur like me would never notice otherwise.
So he's showing us a picture of the laboratory buildings on Belle Isle (and by laboratory, he means girls and women stuffing gun powder in things to be shot) and then zooms in on the far distance where we can clearly see Monroe's tomb in Hollywood Cemetery a mile away.
Like a twisted scientist, he says thing like, "Look, I'll blow that up again. Because I can," and then gives an evil chuckle. Hilarious. Or, about staging photographs back then, "They faked a shot? Of course they did!"
But I also learn so much at his talks, like when he showed us the Gallego flour mills, the largest in the world at the time, and shares that they were 15 stories high in an era when reinforced steel was unknown. Or a photograph of Union graves on Belle Isle when I'd had no clue that had ever been the case.
It wouldn't be a Gorman talk without the picture of NDH - that's "nasty, dead horse" for Gorman virgins - floating in the canal, which he turns into a "movie" by combining it with another view of NDH.
Shots of Lee once he returned to Richmond were taken behind his house on the day Lincoln died and intended to send a message that the war was over.Time to move on, rebels.
One seated shot exposed what Gorman called a "big male no-no," white socks with black shoes. Scratched on the negative was "do not use" because fashion faux pas don't become a losing general apparently. Showing a detail of a standing shot, he showed us graffiti on Lee's house: the word "devil" scratched on a brick behind him.
See? Richmond's tagging problem can't be blamed on VCU students. It goes back to the Civil War.
The presentation ended on a particularly amusing shot of ships in the river, which, once he blew up a detail, showed a man standing naked in the water. "Expose yourself to history," Mike had written across the man's twigs and berries.
With pleasure, as long as it's history cheerleader Mike Gorman doing the exposing.
My exposure to literature, which followed, wasn't nearly as amusing, but it was awfully succinct.
Quill Theater had invited the public to come watch their final dress rehearsal of their 55-minute, six actor touring production of "Romeo and Juliet" at Shafer Street Playhouse.
I don't think I could have invented a good enough reason not to watch love's heavy burden sink a couple of teenagers.
Bonus: I can't help but appreciate a production of "Romeo and Juliet" where the actors playing the leads seem young enough to be believable.
And it never hurts a tragedy to have its light moments courtesy of John Mincks playing a woman, in this case, Juliet's nurse (the cap alone was pure gold). Or, especially for middle and high school audiences, the superb diction of someone like David Janosik or Audra Honaker playing so many roles and making the language accessible to all.
Although I'm far from the target audience for this kind of production - feel free to use every last word of Shakespeare's text and I promise I won't get bored if it's well acted - it was fun watching the classic story unfold in record time.
"The Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare, Abridged" aside, the only briefer Shakespeare I ever saw was an acting class' ten-minute version of "Hamlet" that had the audience in hysterics when the Queen said, "I am poisoned," and tossed her cup to the floor pronto.
But today's "Romeo and Juliet" did accomplish one lovely thing and that was deliver nearly an hour of talented actors reciting some of the most romantic lines in the English language.
Oh, she teaches the torches to burn bright.
And no amount of dancing all night can compare to that.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see the 50th anniversary restored print of "My Fair Lady," I did, but I couldn't justify passing up the funniest park ranger ever or an abridged teenage love story for it.
And, just for the record, I did see a movie (several, actually), improbably enough of the Civil War.
Ranger Mike Gorman - one part photography geek, one part dedicated historian and one part stand-up comedian - was giving a talk and slide show entitled "Richmond, 1865." If, like me, you'd attended "Richmond, 1864," you knew there was no funnier or more informative way to spend an hour without alcohol.
What I love about his presentations is that he does all the work while the audience reaps all the fascinating results.
Leading us on a virtual tour of the city using photographs, he zooms in, blows up and points out minute details an amateur like me would never notice otherwise.
So he's showing us a picture of the laboratory buildings on Belle Isle (and by laboratory, he means girls and women stuffing gun powder in things to be shot) and then zooms in on the far distance where we can clearly see Monroe's tomb in Hollywood Cemetery a mile away.
Like a twisted scientist, he says thing like, "Look, I'll blow that up again. Because I can," and then gives an evil chuckle. Hilarious. Or, about staging photographs back then, "They faked a shot? Of course they did!"
But I also learn so much at his talks, like when he showed us the Gallego flour mills, the largest in the world at the time, and shares that they were 15 stories high in an era when reinforced steel was unknown. Or a photograph of Union graves on Belle Isle when I'd had no clue that had ever been the case.
It wouldn't be a Gorman talk without the picture of NDH - that's "nasty, dead horse" for Gorman virgins - floating in the canal, which he turns into a "movie" by combining it with another view of NDH.
Shots of Lee once he returned to Richmond were taken behind his house on the day Lincoln died and intended to send a message that the war was over.Time to move on, rebels.
One seated shot exposed what Gorman called a "big male no-no," white socks with black shoes. Scratched on the negative was "do not use" because fashion faux pas don't become a losing general apparently. Showing a detail of a standing shot, he showed us graffiti on Lee's house: the word "devil" scratched on a brick behind him.
See? Richmond's tagging problem can't be blamed on VCU students. It goes back to the Civil War.
The presentation ended on a particularly amusing shot of ships in the river, which, once he blew up a detail, showed a man standing naked in the water. "Expose yourself to history," Mike had written across the man's twigs and berries.
With pleasure, as long as it's history cheerleader Mike Gorman doing the exposing.
My exposure to literature, which followed, wasn't nearly as amusing, but it was awfully succinct.
Quill Theater had invited the public to come watch their final dress rehearsal of their 55-minute, six actor touring production of "Romeo and Juliet" at Shafer Street Playhouse.
I don't think I could have invented a good enough reason not to watch love's heavy burden sink a couple of teenagers.
Bonus: I can't help but appreciate a production of "Romeo and Juliet" where the actors playing the leads seem young enough to be believable.
And it never hurts a tragedy to have its light moments courtesy of John Mincks playing a woman, in this case, Juliet's nurse (the cap alone was pure gold). Or, especially for middle and high school audiences, the superb diction of someone like David Janosik or Audra Honaker playing so many roles and making the language accessible to all.
Although I'm far from the target audience for this kind of production - feel free to use every last word of Shakespeare's text and I promise I won't get bored if it's well acted - it was fun watching the classic story unfold in record time.
"The Compleat Works of Wm. Shakespeare, Abridged" aside, the only briefer Shakespeare I ever saw was an acting class' ten-minute version of "Hamlet" that had the audience in hysterics when the Queen said, "I am poisoned," and tossed her cup to the floor pronto.
But today's "Romeo and Juliet" did accomplish one lovely thing and that was deliver nearly an hour of talented actors reciting some of the most romantic lines in the English language.
Oh, she teaches the torches to burn bright.
And no amount of dancing all night can compare to that.
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