"We are such stuff as dreams are made on."
This was the AUSA's Summer Shakespeare production, relocated from its usual spot (behind the university Clocktower) to the Pop-Up Globe.
The scenery and staging was - um - interesting, to say the least. The set consisted of a pile of plastic chairs; I never did quite work what they were intended to represent.
One thing I really, really liked was how Ariel was played by three separate actors, which neatly captured the changeability, and the here-and-there-ness, of this character.
Prospero was played by Lisa Harrow. I have no idea who played the other characters (though several faces were familiar from previous AUSA productions), because the Globe management is still not sufficiently organised to provide programmes ;) Though they have managed to procure the usher's T-Shirts, which are rather neat:
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front |
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back |
We had seats yesterday, in the lower gallery:
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View from the lower gallery |
Some members of the audience (in one of the Lords' Boxes) really got into the spirit of things:
And now, because no words of mine can do sufficient justice to the wackiness of this production, some more photos:
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Ariel |
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"Hast thou, spirit,/Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?" |
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Caliban: "This island's mine by Sycorax my mother,/Which thou tak'st from me." |
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"Hag-seed, hence!" |
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Wider view of the stage. The pig-headed people, who for the most part just sat around watching the action, were quite creepy - vaguely reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. |
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"What have we here?" Trinculo does his Jack Sparrow imitation. |
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Stephano looks on bemused. "What's the matter? Have we devils here?" |
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Enter Ferdinand bearing a log. Though there is nothing in this stage direction stipulating that Ferdinand should be shirtless, the actors at the Pop-Up Globe seem to be doing quite a few shirtless scenes! |
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The goddesses Iris, Ceres and Juno bless the betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda (whose courtship takes exceedingly literally the love-at-first-sight trope! Romeo and Juliet are usually held up as the prime example of an o'er hasty marriage but these two are just as bad...) |
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The wedding masque (frankly surreal) |
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"... this rough magic/I here abjure..." |
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"... I'll break my staff,/Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,/And deeper than ever did plummet sound/I'll drown my book." |
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"Why, that's my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee,/But yet thou shalt have freedom." |
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"...this thing of darkness I/Acknowledge mine." |
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One last confusing fling in the final scene - "more matter for a May morning!" |
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