: Play: As You Like It
On the way home from vacation, we stopped in Ashland, Oregon, to catch some plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. This one was in the outdoor theatre. I was not impressed. It was fiendishly hot, and at the back where we were, it was difficult to hear. The actors didn’t help, with several amateurishly turning their back to the audience while delivering lines! The quality of the acting was disappointing: some were great, but others were quite mediocre, completely demolishing the meaning from Shakespeare’s amazing poetry. I also had issues with the costumes: some were dressed in modern clothing, others in period dress. It was confusing. For instance, at the very beginning, a group of soldiers were dressed as Nazi’s, making me wonder what interpretation the director had in mind. (It turned out they were just supposed to be soldiers, but their uniforms were too Nazi-like for me.) There were other errors as well: two characters were dressed in riding outfits, making it confusing as to which was which (they each appear briefly in different scenes in the beginning). As the play continued it got better, mostly because the story had more action and because the leads were on stage more. Still, it was a dull rendition of what normally is a hilarious play.
Topic: [/travel] |
