Down With Adaptation

So I've been meaning to write about this for a while but Valerie and I went and saw the worst frickin play EVER. Who was it written by? Oh, Shakespeare. El Bardo.

New York, New York. City of five hundred playhouses. Sure, it all can't be good. In fact, most isn't. Even the big stuff has a whole lot of suck in it. But there's genius, real genius in some of these small playhouses, in some of these new plays. If I had more time, money, inclination, need, I would go and seek them out. But as it were Val and I see what we can and try to hit the good ones. We ended up seeing two Shakespeare plays in June. One was brilliant. The other? Excrement.

Shakespeare in the Park is a free show that plays in Central Park June through August. High quality, great stuff.

GRADES
Romeo and Juliet in Central Park: A
Twelfth Night in Back Room: F-

Besides mega budget, what was the difference? Well, the first one stayed true to the play. No wild interpretations, just letting the words the carry the actors. Actors and words, actors and words! That's all you need.

The second one? Some crap filled modern adaptation. Oh, what did it start the play off with? None other than "Funk Soul Brother" by Fat Boy Slim. The actors all played multiple characters which is great, fine, a lovely thing. Shakespeare intended that way. But instead of letting Shakespeare tell the jokes, the actors thought that nothing is funnier than...accents! Yes, multiple confusing geographically distant accents. And besides a lot of suck acting, including a girl that must have had a stroke in her face because it never changed expression, they kept at the idiotic interpretation for two hours at least. Valerie and I started planning a murder/suicide. Unfortunately, we couldn't leave because someone she knew was in it. Thankfully, he was the best thing in it. Which is comparing horse crap to pig crap.

STOP THE SHAKESPEAREAN ADAPTATIONS! A time period change? Great. But why, why does everyone need to reinvent the purported greatest writer ever? Maybe it makes me mad because no one adapts anything else!

No one thinks, "Do you know what The Crucible needs? To be done on Glo Paint swings!"
Or "Sure, Streetcar Named Desire is great but wouldn't it be cooler if it was all in Hell?"
Or "Fiddler on the Roof would be so much better if weren't about Jews!"

Why does no one think these things? Because they're ludicrous!

Please, please stop it. I'm walking out of the next one. Or throwing something. Maybe a Complete Works.