Friday, October 23, 2009

The Bard of Waverly Place

This is the set for the London Globe Theater production of Love's Labors Lost that we saw on the Michigan campus this evening. (I took photos only before the performance and at intermission.) The set was imaginative, clearly designed to be like Shakespeare's original stage with multiple levels and an inner stage, but no changes during the performance.

The production was raucous -- tons of vocal effects, sarcasm, exaggerated costume details, live music on period instruments, lightly modern touches (like playing Hava Nagila when a play-in-play introduced Judas Maccabeus), and constant broad physical humor (even farting jokes) and slapstick of all sorts. The sarcasm and method of reading the lines reminded me of some of the kids' shows on Disney like the "Wizards of Waverly Place" -- really, no kidding. I am not at all familiar with this play, so I don't know if this is a reasonable interpretation.

During Intermission

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