Before we realised that the Globe's indoor Jacobean playhouse was putting on Cymbeline, we had already booked for another production of the play, at Stratford. So on Tuesday off we went.
We had a really nice day; even the drive there was pleasant because it was a lovely day and everywhere looks so brilliantly green. We met old friends for lunch, who live out of Stratford in the opposite direction to Nottingham, and had a potter round the shops. I bought a baby girl's top. It's very exciting to have a little girl to buy for, because my daughter is forty this year and up until February, she was the last little girl in the family.
But the play was really disappointing. Firstly, the theatre didn't lend itself to the play's weird atmosphere nearly as well as the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse did. I suppose it's only to be expected, since Shakespeare wrote Cymbeline with the indoor playhouse in mind. But the bedroom scene where the villain spies on the sleeping Innogen, which is creepy and perverse at all times, was much more so when lit by only a candle. Because it was possible at the indoor theatre, Shakespeare, in these later plays, is quite keen on gods descending from the heavens. The Sam Wanamaker played it straight - Jove descended on wires from the trapdoor in the ceiling - whereas Stratford went for a psychological "explanation" of Posthumus' vision, which I found frankly less convincing.
But the really irritating point was that Stratford had gone mad for political correctness. The colour of the actors doesn't worry me; I don't have a problem with a medieval king of Britain being black, or whatever; but I do have a problem with gender swaps. So Cymbeline, at Stratford, was not the king of Britain, but the queen. Then the wicked stepmother had to become a stepfather, who had to be besotted with his worthless idiot son. I don't find that a psychologically convincing scenario. Then the two lost princes were changed into a lost prince and princess. The princess was the elder and the one who cut off Cloten's head in a temper over her insulted honour.
I know that there are fewer parts for women in Shakespeare's plays, but a lot of the parts that there are, are tremendous. Rosalind; Viola; Lady Macbeth; Cleopatra; Queen Margaret; Titania; the list goes on and on. Sometimes changing the gender of a character doesn't matter too much - the male apothecary was changed into a female one, which while historically unconvincing, didn't alter the story. But changing the genders of more or less the whole royal family does alter the situation. And I wish they wouldn't do it.
We had a really nice day; even the drive there was pleasant because it was a lovely day and everywhere looks so brilliantly green. We met old friends for lunch, who live out of Stratford in the opposite direction to Nottingham, and had a potter round the shops. I bought a baby girl's top. It's very exciting to have a little girl to buy for, because my daughter is forty this year and up until February, she was the last little girl in the family.
But the play was really disappointing. Firstly, the theatre didn't lend itself to the play's weird atmosphere nearly as well as the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse did. I suppose it's only to be expected, since Shakespeare wrote Cymbeline with the indoor playhouse in mind. But the bedroom scene where the villain spies on the sleeping Innogen, which is creepy and perverse at all times, was much more so when lit by only a candle. Because it was possible at the indoor theatre, Shakespeare, in these later plays, is quite keen on gods descending from the heavens. The Sam Wanamaker played it straight - Jove descended on wires from the trapdoor in the ceiling - whereas Stratford went for a psychological "explanation" of Posthumus' vision, which I found frankly less convincing.
But the really irritating point was that Stratford had gone mad for political correctness. The colour of the actors doesn't worry me; I don't have a problem with a medieval king of Britain being black, or whatever; but I do have a problem with gender swaps. So Cymbeline, at Stratford, was not the king of Britain, but the queen. Then the wicked stepmother had to become a stepfather, who had to be besotted with his worthless idiot son. I don't find that a psychologically convincing scenario. Then the two lost princes were changed into a lost prince and princess. The princess was the elder and the one who cut off Cloten's head in a temper over her insulted honour.
I know that there are fewer parts for women in Shakespeare's plays, but a lot of the parts that there are, are tremendous. Rosalind; Viola; Lady Macbeth; Cleopatra; Queen Margaret; Titania; the list goes on and on. Sometimes changing the gender of a character doesn't matter too much - the male apothecary was changed into a female one, which while historically unconvincing, didn't alter the story. But changing the genders of more or less the whole royal family does alter the situation. And I wish they wouldn't do it.
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