Well, I never thought that would happen

[dragonzfaerie]

Tonight I went to a production at the Ringling International Arts Festival of Shakespeare's Sonnets.  Peter Brooks, the director, chose a selection of the sonnets that he felt went well together in order to set up a dialog.  The production itself was very slow to start but picked up once the sonnets being used got more interesting.  The female actor was sort of weak but sufficient for what was being done.  However, the highlight of the event was the Male actor, Michael Pennington.  Now for most people this would not be that big of a deal, but for me this was huge.  Michael Pennington played Posthumous in the BBC's Cymbeline.  This being one of my favorite plays and the only filmed production of it that in on IMDB (and therefore the only one I've ever found), I have seen this movie at least half a dozen times if not more.  So, when he began to act and I heard and saw him, I knew right away that it was him.  The performance he gave made the whole night worth it.  I am so excited to have been able to see an actor whose work I have loved for so long on a stage performing Shakespeare right in front of me. 

Ok, back from my fan girl  crush.  Since this blog is supposed to do something thought provoking I am going to shift gears and talk about the production as a critic for a while:

The concept behind the production, in my opinion, was underdeveloped.  Shakespeare's sonnets were not written as a sequence (other Renaissance writers were doing sequences.  Why not use one of those?) and putting them together, at least is this way was only mildly successful. The production used a minimalist stage setup which I felt was appropriate and left little distractions from the sonnets (except the guy playing the keyboard on the side of the stage between sonnets, he was pretty bad.)  The most distracting thing was the sonnets themselves.  It is very difficult to hold fourteen lines of iambic pentameter in your head when someone else is reading them out loudm making it hard to figure out what the sonnet is actually saying.  Add to the the fact that each sonnet is a response to the one before it and it becomes extremely frustrating to remember where the characters were just at in there relationship. 

Since I got the Tickets for free, it was a night well spent.  Hell, I'd even probably pay to see that performance, but only after remembering that i am going to a dramatized reading -- not a play.