May 4 - 11, 2024
New news in the new court
Image of the Week
His Midsummer proved a testing ground for almost every actor who came through Yale Drama School, Yale Rep, the ART Institute, and the ART. Virtually every student or company member sharpened their teeth on it. Among the actors who played the lovers were Meryl Streep, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Steve Rowe, and Rick Elice…
The real magic is how in fairy-land Christopher Lloyd’s costume stayed on. Judi Dench talks about wearing “nothing but a G-string and a few leaves” as Titania in her new book (p. 26) but this is next level.
Celebrity Casting News
David Oyelowo will play Coriolanus (or “Corioulanus”) at the National Theatre, directed by Lindsey Turner, updating the celebrity Shakespeare casting matrix thusly:
Now Playing:
Tom Holland in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Jamie Lloyd (London, May 11-August 2, 2024)
This production may or not involve drones and scaling theater roofs
Ian McKellen in the Henry IV Pt. 1 & 2 mashup Player Kings, adapted and directed by Robert Icke (London, through June 22)
Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in Macbeth, adapted by Emily Burns, directed by Simon Godwin (Filmed, multiple dates in May)
Upcoming:
David Oyelowo in Coriolanus at the National Theatre, directed by Lindsey Turner (London, September 11-November 9, 2024)
Kit Connor and Rachel Ziegler in Romeo and Juliet, directed by Sam Gold – (NYC, Fall 2024)
Tagline: “The youth are f**ked”
Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in Othello, directed by Kenny Leon (NYC, Spring 2025)
By the Book: Judi Dench
Does the Shakespeare authorship debate interest you?
No. William Shakespeare from Stratford is good enough for me and I’ll settle for that.
Amen. In this week’s New York Times Book Review.
“We were about to learn that Hamlet was in the words and in the subtle rhythm of the words, not in our interior lives…”
Anna Deavere Smith is halfway through presenting four Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art titled Chasing That Which Is Not Me / Chasing That Which Is Me. You can still register to see the final two live if you are in the D.C. area or view them online after. In her first lecture, she talks about signing up for an summer acting class “at the biggest richest, all-white theater in town”:
Our assignment that very day was, take 14 lines of Shakespeare and say him over and over again until something happens…I said 14 lines of Queen Margaret – which happened to be a curse against Richard – over and over again, over and over again, over and over again for several hours...and something did happen. I saw Queen Margaret. I saw her right there in the basement of the apartment that I had rented for the summer. I conjured her. I had not had any substance. No chemical substance that could have rendered that transcendental experience. That experience occupied my imagination for about 4 or 5 years.
Greg Doran’s Canon Completion
Doran is this year’s Cameron Mackintosh visiting professor of contemporary theatre at St Catherine’s College…Doran has had the bright idea of using his tenure to direct the one play in the First Folio that has so far eluded him: The Two Gents.
…There’s a scene where Launce and Speed, two comic servants, discuss the attributes of a milkmaid. One of the actors said to me that it was exactly like a Hinge profile…Doran wants us all to radically rethink the play: to banish the idea of Proteus as a moustache-twirling villain, to glory in the verse and to see this early work as an intense study of the pangs of youth.
“'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball…the intertissued robe of gold and pearl…”
Trevor Bowen makes beautiful things for kings.
Now Could I Drink Hot Blood
I’m a huge fan of Dracula Daily and looking forward to following the whole story through since I joined somewhere in the middle last time. The latest go-round started on May 3 (still time to join!) already has some Shakespeare in it:
May 8 – (Mem., this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "Arabian Nights," for everything has to break off at cockcrow—or like the ghost of Hamlet's father.)