TheBanyanTree: Me, Romeo and Juliet

[Theta Brentnall]

Too bad that no buckets of tar and bales of feathers were provided for the audience to properly show their appreciation. I agree with Gail that your version is better. 

Theta

Sent from my iPad

> On Sep 27, 2013, at 6:34 AM, "Gail Richards" <mrsfes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It sounds like I enjoyed reading this much better than you actually enjoyed your night at the theater!!!
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: Peter Macinnis
> Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 6:08 PM
> To: BanyanTree
> Subject: TheBanyanTree: Me, Romeo and Juliet
> 
> I suppose I didn't approach the production at the Drama theatre in the
> Sydney Opera House with the right reverent attitudes.  Of course, I am
> rather keen on C. J. Dennis' 'The Sentimental Bloke', written a century
> ago in Australian vernacular--and in particular, the part where they go
> to see said play.  Here's an excerpt:
> 
> 'Wot's in a name?" she sez. 'Struth, I dunno.
> Billo is just as good as Romeo.
> She may be Juli—er or Juli—et ——
> 'E loves 'er yet.
> If she's the tart 'e wants, then she's 'is queen,
> Names never count ... But ar, I like "Doreen!"
> 
> A sweeter, dearer sound I never 'eard;
> Ther's music 'angs around that little word,
> Doreen! ... But wot was this I starts to say
> About the play?
> I'm off me beat. But when a bloke's in love
> 'Is thorts turns 'er way, like a 'omin' dove.
> 
> This Romeo 'e's lurkin' wiv a crew ——
> A dead tough crowd o' crooks —— called Montague.
> 'Is cliner's push —— wot's nicknamed Capulet ——
> They 'as 'em set.
> Fair narks they are, jist like them back—street clicks,
> Ixcep' they fights wiv skewers 'stid o' bricks.
> 
> ***********
> 
> That aside, there were warnings in the foyer that there would be bangs'
> flashes, smoking and nudity.  Clearly, this was to be a modern production.
> 
> I grimaced slightly at this news, and declared that if Friar Laurence
> got his kit off, I was leaving.  No worries there, it was only R and J
> who disrobed, and they kept their knickers on, mainly because all the
> actors were miked (!!) and they needed somewhere to hide the battery
> pack and transmitter.  Sadly, the microphones did nothing for their
> diction, but that was OK because they were messing about with the script.
> 
> Anyhow, it being Grand Final season, when the non-round-ball football
> codes send out their stupidest alpha males to maim each other, and all
> the bogans go mad.  So I asked Chris if we should barrack for the
> Montagues or the Capulets, and then things started to degenerate.
> 
> Before the opening, a ladder somehow got involved with a part of the
> audience as it came down off the stage and then back into the wings, and
> I expressed the hope that they would enliven the proceedings by a short
> excerpt from 'Pyramus and Thisbe', re-scored for two choruses, with the
> ladder playing the part of Wall and offering a plethora of chinks.  That
> would have been good, I said, and after, she agreed.
> 
> Still, no such luck, but hope springs eternal, and I began to hope for a
> proper pastiche, just after Friar Laurence slipped in one of the sonnets
> (116: "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds ...") as
> the marriage lines.
> 
> (I might add that Friar Laurence was depicted in a garden of ferns,
> collecting *flowers*!  Some botanist and druggist he'd be!  Mind you,
> they were probably GM ferns, so I suppose anything's possible.)
> 
> Given the sonnet cross-over, I began to hope for a cage fight between
> Macbeth and Macduff (didn't happen), a cream pie fight between Titania
> and Oberon, formation nude bathing in a bird bath by knights in armour,
> a cameo role for Caliban and a kraken (all ditto).  I began to count on
> the return of the ladder to retrieve helium balloons that had escaped in
> the party scene, with Bottom and Falstaff as the retrievers, dancing on
> the ladder to the rock music playing for the party.  Again, no luck, but
> all the party-goers wore white rabbit masks and that was a plus.
> 
> You could spot Capulet, though, because he had a greasy pony-tail that
> looked silly at the back of a rabbit.
> 
> But at the end, Juliet was still alive, and she had a gun, and
> apparently knew how to use it.  I'm fairly sure that's not how it
> happened in the 1600s.  I hoped she would fire a shot into the fly loft,
> with two rubber chickens falling to the stage, but Paris had used three
> shots to try and kill Romeo, Romeo got the gun and used one to kill
> Paris, and she must have wanted to make every shot count, so no rubber
> chickens.
> 
> Still, when a pantomime horse crossed the stage, followed by a hunchback
> crying "A Norse, a Norse, my Kingdom for a Norse", a flood of slaughter
> ran through the theatre when we realised he was doing a Danish accent
> and waving a skull.  We were a sophisticated audience.
> 
> Actually, that might not have happened (but it should have), or if it
> did happen, it might have been a flood of laughter that ran: my notes
> are hard to read, and by then I was concentrating on the structure of
> the next book, and trying not to echo 'The Bloke' in the fight scenes:
> 
> "Put in the boot!" I sez. "Put in the boot!"
> "'Ush!" sez Doreen ... "Shame!" sez some silly coot.
> 
> 
> Well might we all say, "Put in the boot" to this performance.  Next
> time, I want a re-run of 'Charley's Aunt'.
> 
> peter
> 
> -- 
> Peter Macinnis, boutique word herder & science gossip,
> stand-up chameleon and part-time lay-down misère:
> http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/