My favorite WS play is The Tempest.

I've tried to figure out what's so great about this play, and I can't.

For me it's all about the language. I think this play is his most lyrical and beautifully written. I do agree that he wrote several other plays with more gripping plots.

My favorite WS play is The Tempest.

You know how sometimes you will see a show, and it was either so good or so horrific that you never want to see it again? Yeah. I got burned on The Tempest a few summers ago. Shakespeare in the Park (here), Prospero and Miranda were both TV actors imported from LA and had no idea how to act on stage, and just... eugh. Caliban rocked, though.

We are delving far into Richard III right now, because Z is directing it next year and I'm the one who has the patience for the history plays.

Heh. It's hard for me to think of Richard III as a history, because it feels so much like one of his regular plays. Like Hamlet as told from Claudius' point-of-view. The villain is your protagonist; how cool is that?

For me it's all about the language. I think this play is his most lyrical and beautifully written.

Yeah, I think that's usually the reason I've heard given. O brave new play, with such language in it.

I love the scene in Richard III where Richard talks Anne around at her own husband's funeral. It's so gloriously creepy. Oddly, I've never seen any of the movies of RIII.

"Ran" is heartbreaking. Especially the ending, where the poor guy up on the plateau drops his picture of Buddha, the only thing which has been giving him any comfort. Damn. I either shut the movie off right before that scene, or I spend the next hour weeping because I can't reach into the screen and pick it up for him.

"Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won?"

I think I was too tired to pay attention during Ran. It was so long. I enjoyed the cartwheeling Fool, though.

"Ran" is heartbreaking.

Oh, yes. This.

Connie, I think you might really enjoy Looking For Richard. It's a good look at it.

Ran also has the Greatest Battle Scene of All Time, a balancing act of Noh theater, epic grandeur, perfect-circle cinematography, John Ford-style emotional grit, Rachmaninoff, and blood. Every time I see it, no matter how many times I've watched it before, I'm completely shocked that such a scene even exists.

Dork Tower's homage to Bloomsday.

Has anyone else seen Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's MacBeth?

I read it, but haven't seen it. It takes a lot of brainpower to see the words on the page and approximate what the enactment would be like. Gave me a new appreciation of dramatic reading/acting, it did. (It was also infuriating, because the teacher, who had clearly seen the play put on, didn't get how none of his students could envision it properly, and he kept on like, Come on people! This isn't so hard! And we all replied, YES THIS IS HARD SHUT UP YOU LITTLE MAN. But by the end, I was starting to get it.)

I saw part of a Tempest put on for children, a long time ago, that (I think heavily adapted the text and) used masks in a really cool way. Caliban was introduced as a man with a clay pot stuck over his head -- like when you grow a pear inside a jar. And the decisive moment when he gets free of enchantment is his taking a board and breaking the pot so it shatters down around his shoulders.

Ariel was a woman in black, hooded, holding a white moon-like puppet. When Prospero sets her free at the end, what he does is take the puppet, carefully, and set it on the floor, and then in a trice he snatches the hood off the woman's face. She looks up, looks around, bursts into happy tears, and runs away into the audience.

I read it, but haven't seen it. It takes a lot of brainpower to see the words on the page and approximate what the enactment would be like.

Ohhhh, yeah. It's a very hard read. But fantastic to watch onstage.

That Tempest sounds lovely, Nutty.