TheBanyanTree: Me, Romeo and Juliet

[Theta Brentnall]

I don't think that was the idea!

Theta

On 9/27/2013 8:23 AM, Teague, Julie Anna wrote:
>
> 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/
>>
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