Well, yesterday was an absolutely glorious day here in Guernsey, I don’t think we saw a cloud all day and there was just the lightest of sea breezes. We’d already booked to watch some outdoor theatre up at the castle so we made a day of it, echewing the car and taking a stroll down to our picturesque seafront town, grabbing a spot of lunch at a terrace restaurant and generally kicking back.
The theatre in question was Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, which I’d never seen performed before but is believed to be one of his first. It was pretty good - the players in question were the irreverent Oddsocks who never take it particularly seriously so it’s always good for a laugh. My personal favourites to see are still Much Ado About Nothing (simply because of the inspired banter between Benedick and Beatrice, which has to include some of the most finely crafted insults ever written - and Kenneth Branagh / Emma Thomson’s version is superb), and The Merchant of Venice, but it’s all good. I used to hate Shakespeare when we were forced to read it at school, but I found it absolutely transformed when performed well - which is after all how it was supposed to be experienced anyway, not studied in stuffy school rooms.
The only downside was that the play was performed in a sun-trap of a section of the castle, where none of the sea breezes reached and away from the shade so we were basically grilled for the two and an half hours (not counting intermission). I now have the typical shorts-and-T-shirt-masked tan just from that. My wife can never believe how fast I tan, she’s expecting me to change nationality by the time we come back from Thailand later in the year.
So, a good day anyway. I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on today and if I’m lucky might have some time to continue to experiment with scripting the build of an OSX SDK, since once I’ve done that I want to get OGRE 1.4.4 out the door.
August 12th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Hah! Yeah, Oddsocks are great. I saw them at christmas a couple of years ago and they really made me laugh.
August 12th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
I, like you, love to see Shakespeare performed live.
I also like to read Shakespeare (but then again I never had it forced upon me at school).
However, I much prefer the tragedies over the comedies, and I’ve never been that impressed by Oddsock (who as you say, never take it very seriously).
My favourite performance I’ve seen at the Castle so far was MacBeth - by a very convincing all male cast (much like it was is the days of Shakespeare). I’d love to see King Lear performed live, my favourite of Shakespeare’s tragedies!
August 12th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I’ve always preferred Shakespeare’s comedies, the tragedies are just a little too depressing! Other troupes have done comedies in much less of a madcap way than Oddsocks, but all styles are good.
August 17th, 2007 at 10:16 am
I would never read Shakespeare in my spare time, but I love to work with it at school. But that’s probably pretty dependant on the teacher.