Boooooo (or not)

Boo to Jules who won't let me comment on her LJ site, in order to say:

Yay to Jules' new layout. Velly velly nice.

Boo to feeling oddish and out of sortsish when...

...YAY, everything's going so very well (please God!) for Seven Ages.

And yay to singing unexpectedly at mass with John and Allie. Goodliness.

Yay as well, I finished IV.1. of Hamlet and am about to start "I Walk Alone." Yaaaaaaaaaaay. Edit: I'm actually in the middle of that scene! Huzzah huzzah! Picture below.

A BIG old boooooooooooooooooo to Hamlet Quarto. Not only is there a *reason* it's called the "Bad Quarto" (it doesn't even sound like Shakespeare on a bad day!), but the costumes were atrocious (think Brigadoon era in terms of thrown-togetherness but think certain other shows for the not-fittiness), the acting was well-dictioned but totally charicatures...and the director directed (yay? which was the first I'd seen definitively in a while?) BUT booooooooooo it was all OBSCENE.

And obscene for no reason. Hands down the most disgusting Nunnery scene to date. He basically raped her on stage. I'm sorry - but I'm supposed to want Hamlet to live after that? Riiiiiiiiight. And what they did with the "will you play upon this pipe" - unspeakable. Just...dumb. Mousetrap awful - most of the time Claudius and Gertrude weren't even watching or reacting to their own lives being unfolded before them, and they certainly weren't watching Hamlet who was basically raping Ophelia again (death death DEATH to the misogynistic representation of Hamlet! DEEEEEEEEATH!). Oh, and after all this we're supposed to buy Hamlet declaring "I loved Ophelia?" Sorry. Even the actors didn't buy it. Hamlet jumped in the grave like a silly thing, as though he were testing out holes in the ground for comfort, stood calmly next to Laertes and said, "I loved Ophelia. Twenty thousand brothers could not make up my sum," etc. etc. as though he were having a pleasant but meaningless conversation with Laertes, literally over Ophelia's dead body. Don't get me started on the StrongMad "NO BREAD" Neanderthal Overacting Laertes who made me giggle at the grave scene and nearly made me wonder if he'd somehow contrived to kill his sister. But anyway....

However, they did have a beautiful set, their diction was amazing, and the director did something - he just didn't do anything right. For example, Hamlet's Dad was a woman. I mean just simple "arugh?" Pardon me, but how did Hamlet come about, then? But then again there was so much androgony on the stage that I could never be sure when Polonius held Reynaldo's breast whether Reynaldo was supposed to be the female she was or the male she was written or what or whether it mattered or perhaps whether the director had ever had SexEd 101: How to tell men apart from women. (The answer? Sweaters! ;P)

Anywho...it was really good to see, though, because it helped solidify a couple things in my brain. A bit. Oh, Jules. Much love to Jules and the Red Dragon.

And finally "yay" to Jills (break legs but not costumes!) and to YouTube and to HCHers for this latest piece of YouTubiness.



Mood: At sixes and sevens
Music: Odd mental jumble
Thought: Trying. Really really trying. Huh. There's a double meaning in that! Oh, for unmitigated joy!
And for more kicks and giggles: hamlet and Salome montages