Prithee, after roughly 14 years of living in Greater Vancouver, we finally got our act together (act III, if you must know), and went to see Bard on the Beach. For our first play, Holly and I chose a comedy - one of Shakespeare's earliest, The Comedy of Errors.
We were at the main stage, which had bleacher-style seating, and a big stage open in the back to views of the city and the mountains and the passing sailboats. (Beautiful.) Apparently, there were 520 seats, and I think they were all full, except for one beside me! Not only that, but they were full or spoken for 20 minutes before the show started - we were lucky to get two seats together. We were off to... I guess stage right, and we had a pretty good view of the stage and the steps and whatnot. They had a very clever center stage piece that acted as door, house front, abbey front, puppet stage, and more.
The play itself was so much funnier and more accessible than I imagined it might be! The way I understand things, Shakespeare himself was not above the crude, pander-to-the-masses jokes (the sort of Elizabethan equivalents of the football-in-the-groin gags), and the cast delivered them beautifully. The Comedy of Errors is all about cases of mistaken identity between two sets of identical twins. Lots of double takes, lots of "but I thought you said..." and lots of being arrested and punished for the other twin's transgressions. Mayhem ensued.
In conclusion, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and would easily recommend this to anyone. Holly and I both agreed that a comedy is the way to go - we have trouble seeing the point of going to see a tragedy. The Comedy of Errors was the perfect play with which to kicketh off our Bard experiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment