TheBanyanTree: Me, Romeo and Juliet

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Hilarious review!  Makes me want to see it.

Quoting Peter Macinnis <petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au>:

> 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/
>