Crappy hockey and theater links

I went to the Rangers game tonight because I thought it would be less depressing than the debate. Boy, was I wrong.

In addition to exceedingly sloppy, uninspired hockey, tonight also featured the worst "Potvin Sucks" chanting I've ever heard. The first 30 minutes of the game practically begged for the chant about 90% of the time, but the only time it managed to get chanted was when something actually important was going on. In sum, the whole night just seemed.

Too tired to do a full on blog post on theater, but here are the links that have drawn my eye today:

-Time Out Chicago covers marketing: Elizabethan style. You may Marnie Stern's new album had a long title, but she ain't got nothing on Marlowe.

-Frost/Nixon: not so much, says the L.A. Times. This is particularly depressing, because the main knock on the play crtics had was that it would be better off as a movie.

-CNN Newsanchor says the worst word in the English language—twice!


-Milan Kundera, former Soviet informant (though still not as big of a hypocrite as Gunter Grass).

Titus Andronicus Redux: Has Post-modernism Gone Too Far

It's virtually impossible to do Titus Andronicus straight. Even by today's standards, the play's a bloodbath, which has led the likes of T.S. Elliot and Harold Bloom to dismiss the play as one of Shakespeare's worst. Bloom himself speculated that the best person to direct Titus would be Mel Brooks, and while Charles Newell of the Court Theater is not inherently a funny man, he's tried to honor the schlock value of the play with a production of Titus that consistently maintains a wink of the eye to the audience. Hidden in the program is the line "adapted by Charles Newell," but that credit should be taken to heart. Newell's production is staged as a banquet for contemporary soldiers performing Titus melodramatically in jest, carrying scripts and messing up cues. While the initial murders are played in jest, eventually reality overtakes the evening, as art takes over life (or what we're supposed to believe is life). Newell's Titus has as much to do with Shakespeare as a Seder has to do with Exodus.

The problem with adaptations like these, where lines are added and new dimensions opened, is not necessarily matter of Shakespeare purism. The issue is that when people go to a Shakespeare play, even one as ridiculous as Titus, they go to see Shakespeare. True, Newell will be the one judged by the production no matter what he does, but trying to revise Shakespeare outright is more likely to offend your audience than win them over. While the audience laughed at some of Newell's touches, they were mostly cheap laughs. At the end of the night, the audience left the theater feeling cheated.

The other problem is that when you compare your own writing to Shakespeare, even a young, immature Shakespeare, you're bound to lose. While not one of his best plays, Titus still has remarkable poetry and tragic characterizations, which trump Newell's additions even while being suffocated by Newell. Hence, the production feels like there's a better play to be found underneath what's really being seen.

"But look at me!" Newell says. "I'm revising Shakespeare!" Sorry, but that act is not inherently in and of itself noteworthy. The Court's production stretches the limits of postmodernism, and in doing so displays post-modern dramatic theory's inherent weaknesses: revisionism for the sake of revisionism does not make for a satisfying night of theater. When the production finally tries to take itself seriously, it's not believable. The production was clearly intently thought out, rigorously rehearsed, and features impressive technical design and skilled actors. Despite all that, it still feels lazy and insincere. There's no clear vision for the play, other than to say there is no vision. If I wanted to understand that there was no need for vision, I could have stayed at home on a freezing Saturday night curled up with a book of Derrida essays.