Last night we went to the Shakespeare Theater in Chicago. After several presentations of his tragedies, comedies and love stories over the years I have never been disappointed. We are truly blessed to have such excellence in theater as we do. I don't know where else in the WORLD you could go to see better.
I go to operas, movies and watch TV and sometimes come away less than enthralled. But when it comes to Shakespeare as presented in Chicago I'm in awe.
We saw Much Ado About Nothing. If you know the play you know it's a comedy. It is funnier than anything I have seen in a very long time.
Having read it, it's much funnier when skillfully presented by excellent actors. I fell out of my seat several times from laughing. The color and beauty of the language wrapped with the tempo and timing of well placed lines left me awestruck and longing for more.
TV and movies can't do this. The spectacle and panorama of a live stage is so far superior to a screen it's hard to imagine how they could do this as well as they did on a movie or TV screen.
Oh, the language is as written with all the thees and thous. It takes about 20 seconds for your ears to switch and hear it as natural as if you heard a man from Kansas talking.
The clever interplay, twists and tensions cause me these conclusions:
- No writer of Seinfeld, Hogan's Heroes, SNL, Mad TV, and any stand up comedian I have ever seen is as consistently funny as this was and is after 500 years. Isn't that amazing?
- Skillful acting can make even reading the phone book entertaining.
- Much of what we watch on TV and in Movies is absolute drivel. There are a few which tug, humor, entertain but so few and so infinitely far between that it is a sad commentary on our modern culture.
So, my question is, are we dumber than they were then?
My answer is, TV and Movie producers sure think so. Maybe they're right.
1 comment:
The problem with Shakespeare is that he had a different word for everything.
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