tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post983415402141328297..comments2023-09-20T14:34:21.102+02:00Comments on Postcards from the Gods: doubleplus UnwinAndrew Haydonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05568061302451610140noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-51993135263285689782011-06-17T13:11:40.069+02:002011-06-17T13:11:40.069+02:00Sorry, Andrew, me again. I've just been readi...Sorry, Andrew, me again. I've just been reading your blog and came across your review of WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN with lots of confident assumptions about 'the actual play' and what 'the text makes possible'. I thought I was the one blathering on about 'the play'...<br /><br />“Anyway, that’s all window dressing. We’re here to see a play. Aren’t we?<br /><br />Perhaps not. It does feel a bit like the actual play itself is forever being pushed to the back of the room like an embarrassing uncle at a posh do. And with good reason. Given all the pains that have been taken to make the stage look smart and funky, the last thing you want is a shabby relic from a bygone age – with worryingly different values – turning up and cackling about incest and not terribly consensual intercourse.<br /><br />The fact is, Women Beware Women is hardly a play with an attractive or modern outlook. As Howard Barker put it (in Conversation with Dead Poet - Arguments for a Theatre, p.25), "it is simply unrealistic to inflict slaughter on all the participants in the interests of morality. It was quite obvious to me you [i.e. Middleton] did not believe in that yourself but were fulfilling a convention".<br /><br />Elliott seems to have taken a decision to present a lot of the characters as more sympathetic to a modern viewpoint, perhaps more than the text actually makes possible.”Stephen Unwinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4481691725314537521.post-5219061631343798012011-06-17T12:49:46.918+02:002011-06-17T12:49:46.918+02:00This is a good read and I'm sure some of it...This is a good read and I'm sure some of it's right. <br /><br />But I'm a little startled by the violence of the hatchet job, and I don't think your ventriloquising of what I'm saying is quite fair. I've directed Shakespeare in many different ways: some good, some bad; some hailed, some slated; some 'modern', some 'traditional', and I know we should all do whatever we like with the stuff. My first paragraph openly admits to the conflict of interest and I really don't think I'm the Zhadonovite charlatan of your caricature. <br /><br />But I do think Shakespeare is very hard to do well, and that our familiarity with the material makes it harder still. My view is certainly shared by an awful lot of actors and directors who love the stuff (look how many of them won't touch it). Opera with its much narrower repertoire faces the same challenge. <br /><br />But let me ask you two questions:<br /><br />Someone said that the RSC should treat a new play as if it was a classic and a classic as if it was a new play. I like that objective. Do you think that's faux naif?<br /><br />I'm trying to write a book about the poor people in Shakespeare, an area that hasn't attracted much attention in recent years. I imagine you might dismiss that, on the grounds that Shakespeare's multiplicity of meanings means that it's impossible to get much of a fix on his characters or social world? Or do you feel that the kind of close reading that such a study will entail (if I can ever get the damn thing done!) is of no consequence to theatrical practice?<br /><br />Why don't we have lunch one day and not shout at each other online? <br /><br />Stephen<br /><br />steveunwin@btinternet.comStephen Unwinnoreply@blogger.com