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May. 13th, 2014 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretOn roga's recommendation I saw the Improvised Shakespeare Company last night.
On the one hand, their shtick is comparatively simple: They take a single prompt from the audience, a title, and use it as the seed to improvise a one hour pseudo-Shakepearean play.
On the other hand, this is a really impressively complicated brief. They develop characters with unique narrative arcs and mannerisms, make puns and rhymes in mock-Elizabethan English, and tell a complete story made up on the spot.
Last night, I saw the one and only performance of "Romeo and Julie Andrews". I'd say its constituent ingredients were about thirty percent Romeo and Juliet, thirty percent Sound of Music, 20 percent Mary Poppins, 10 percent Macbeth, 10 percent assorted other Shakespeare and Julie Andrews jokes. A roving gang chimney sweeps (and one bellringer) plotted ineffectual revenge on the son of King Andrews of Scotland. King Andrews's daughter Julie, newly returned from the convent and overflowing with hormones (In one of the best lines of the night, she declares that she is thirteen-going-on-fourteen), is to be married to a mysterious foreign prince until she elopes with MacRomeo. MacRomeo and Julie Andrews are wed by a trio of woodland sprites that are a little bit Weird Sisters, a little bit Ariel and Caliban and Puck, and a little bit Von Trapp. The wedding ceremony was a punny invocation of the complete cycle of "Do, a Deer". The whole thing was amazing.
roga's recommendation I saw the Improvised Shakespeare Company last night.On the one hand, their shtick is comparatively simple: They take a single prompt from the audience, a title, and use it as the seed to improvise a one hour pseudo-Shakepearean play.
On the other hand, this is a really impressively complicated brief. They develop characters with unique narrative arcs and mannerisms, make puns and rhymes in mock-Elizabethan English, and tell a complete story made up on the spot.
Last night, I saw the one and only performance of "Romeo and Julie Andrews". I'd say its constituent ingredients were about thirty percent Romeo and Juliet, thirty percent Sound of Music, 20 percent Mary Poppins, 10 percent Macbeth, 10 percent assorted other Shakespeare and Julie Andrews jokes. A roving gang chimney sweeps (and one bellringer) plotted ineffectual revenge on the son of King Andrews of Scotland. King Andrews's daughter Julie, newly returned from the convent and overflowing with hormones (In one of the best lines of the night, she declares that she is thirteen-going-on-fourteen), is to be married to a mysterious foreign prince until she elopes with MacRomeo. MacRomeo and Julie Andrews are wed by a trio of woodland sprites that are a little bit Weird Sisters, a little bit Ariel and Caliban and Puck, and a little bit Von Trapp. The wedding ceremony was a punny invocation of the complete cycle of "Do, a Deer". The whole thing was amazing.
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Date: 2014-05-13 04:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-09 01:48 am (UTC)