Shakespeare

Katie and I did­n’t get to watch A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream until last night, because we want­ed to wait until sam­bear could watch it with us. He was extreme­ly late get­ting home from work, though, and then he could­n’t stay awake to watch the whole thing anyway.

Still, it was pret­ty good. I did­n’t real­ize until it start­ed that the set­ting for this film (the ver­sion with Michelle Pfeif­fer and Kevin Kline) was changed to late 19th cen­tu­ry Italy instead of ancient Athens. Did they just like the cos­tum­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties more? Does some­one have a bicy­cle fetish? 

Any­way, it gave us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about how Shake­speare’s sto­ries have been retold in many dif­fer­ent set­tings. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I found the ref­er­ences to “the laws of Athens” and the tem­ple of Diana along­side the Ital­ian set­ting and Catholic priests to be jar­ring. And the Ama­zon­ian queen thing makes no sense at all in that setting.

I sup­pose I’m biased—I had a very small part in a com­mu­ni­ty the­ater pro­duc­tion of the play when I was in high school.

So… any rec­om­men­da­tions for the next of the Bard’s works to be read and watched on video? (Eas­i­er on our sched­ule than live the­ater, although we want to do that, too). Which ver­sion of video?

Remem­ber, the intend­ed audi­ence is an 11-year-old.

We’re look­ing for per­for­mances, not “mod­ern adap­ta­tions.” Although watch­ing an adap­ta­tion after read­ing the play and see­ing a per­for­mance would­n’t be a problem.

I sup­pose we should do some ver­sion of Romeo and Juli­et but I’ve nev­er liked that one—not roman­tic, just stupid.