I saw a production of Timon of Athens at the theater in Stratford - on -Avon when I was in England. Just me and the tour guide went since no one else wanted to see a play they never heard of. Which turned out to be a good thing considering the simulated forced oral sex and a few other things (the tour trip was mostly Southern Baptists). Then afterwards we walked back and stood on a bridge and watched the swans getting swept by the quick current, it was funny to see them at odd angles sort of racing along.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite Shakespeare play, but I have never seen a production of it that is really good.

For younger kids, you can play Midsummer Night's Dream about marriage, rather than the sex, if you need to down play it. It still works, either way.

I'm reading about Rush Limbaugh accusing Michael J. Fox of playing up the symptoms of his Parkinson's for a political ad. WTF? Is Rush back on the pills????

99% of the time, all the mistaken identity confusion could be solved by one simple conversation that the characters go to extreme lengths to avoid having. It's tiresome after the umpteenth identical plot.

OK, that is the big problem with farce. But I've found that people in real life often have communication issues, too. It's just not as funny.

I have to admit I like Twelfth Night, a lot. My college put it on a few years back when I was taking a stage lighting class, so I got to see a lot of the preproduction stage work. It was wonderful to watch everything slowly come together. But, the actual performance? Knocked it out of the park. I never laughed so hard in my life.

And, welcome, Laga and vroomvroom!

Farce can be funny if no one knows about the misunderstanding and therefore doesn't know that they need to have a conversation to hammer it out. It's fun when the audience is the only one who holds all the cards. People being avoidy isn't funny, it's painful.

My issue is the same one I have with most modern comedies -- 99% of the time, all the mistaken identity confusion could be solved by one simple conversation that the characters go to extreme lengths to avoid having. It's tiresome after the umpteenth identical plot.

This reminds me of Steph's Who's On First issues.

It's funny because it's true!

The live production of Twelfth Night I saw as a junior in high school featured Sir Toby Belch singing a song titled "Hold Your Piece". Let's just say that a lot of pieces were being held.

Then when Maria enters and yells, "PEACE!" The laughter was deafening. I still laugh out loud thinking about it.

Shaw also thought that sex was icky, and that in the future we'd evolve into perfect beings that wouln't have sex.

Well, I can't agree with him on that first point, but I'm pleased to hear I'm a perfect being.

It had a really good Puck -- the girl was quite obviously a gymnast,

t Super Porny Pants raises eyebrow and grins slyly...

But MND isn't really about communications issues fucking things up. It's the damn meddling fairies.

I once saw a very Goth Dream. Essentially all the fair folk were undead - mostly walking corspes, but I think spirts where they were required to be more nimble. I've seen worse MDs. And faerie folk were originally the ghosts of a dead race, the people inside the hollow hill. So making them undead well within the spirit of the myth - though pretty obviously not what Shakespeare had in mind.

Also I once saw a truly awful MacBeth in which Heston played the lead. The man even in his prime was obviously not a stage actor. I forget who played lady MacBeth also a really major film actress - one who did OK, but was not really suited for the role.