I Went and Saw a Play

Last Wednesday, I went to see a play in The Cities with my friend Jon. The Guthrie Theatre was putting on Shakespeare's As You Like It, and the school got cheap tickets and provided a bus for the journey. There was a fiasco with the bus, mainly that it broke down, and they had to send another one, which meant we left campus much later than intended. But once that was all taken care of, the 10 or 11 of us boarded the very large charter bus and departed.

The Guthrie is a very modern theatre. From all appearances, one would draw this conclusion. The architecture of the place is very very modern looking; I would doubt there are many straight lines, right angles, or other signs of conventional architecture about the place. The plays put on there are similarly inclined. Though one usually expects to find Ganymede (ironically the name of our college server, or one of them) in a medieval forest, this time we encountered him/her in a psychedelic forest of splendid color, tie died shirts, and amazing sunglasses. One wouldn't really have thought this was Shakespeare. The "thou's," "prithee's," and "soft's" gave the authorship away, but the rest of it seemed more lively and realistic than all those Shakespeare plays we read in high school.

I didn't know Shakespeare wrote songs either. He did, Jon checked. They are all in the text of the play. But, we agreed, he didn't write them very well. The fact that no music was ever officially written for them doesn't help either. Thus, we heard some wonderful singing, and we also heard some less than remarkable stuff. I took objection to the Whoopee Goldberg figure that pranced around the stage with a microphone. I did enjoy, however, the chant "Dummy Duke Dummy Duke." It reminded me of sophomore year of high school "Stupid Frank, Stupid Frank." Poor Gamby. Oh well. My sister is having problems with him now too. Perhaps the idiot just can't get along with Republican Progeny..."

That was a tangent. I enjoyed the Guthrie, though it didn't seem as professional or homey as the Temple Hoyne Buel of the DCPA. There is something to be said for being a patron of the arts, and there is pleasure to be extracted from seeing and not just reading Shakespeare. I got back and the night was gone, but that is a sign of a good play. And I was able to make up the viewing of Konchalovsky's The Inner Circle for Modern Russia tonight, so I did not suffer much by that nocturnal excursion.

Oh, and they had some really good chocolate cake stuff there. We ate it at intermission. Thanks Jon!