Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Since several people on my reading list have been posting about memorable (including memorably good, bad, and just plain weird) productions of Shakespeare 's plays, and listing what they have and haven't seen, I tried to make a list. I have thus discovered, or confirmed, that there are plays that I can't remember whether I've seen.

So, for what it's worth, Shakespeare I've seen, or might have seen:

A Midsummer Night's Dream, several times -- it seems to have been a popular choice for theater companies to put on in the 1980s and 1990s.

Cymbelline, an outdoor production in Central Park, during the years when Joe Papp decided the Public Theatre was going to put on all of Shakespeare. (A lot of those were in their theatre in the East Village.)

Hamlet, also several times, including Raoul Bhaneja's excellent one-man version, at the New York Fringe about a decade ago. One summer weekend in New York, looking for something to do, I saw that there were three different free outdoor productions of Hamlet in NYC that weekend, including "Shakespeare in the parking lot."

King Lear, which I had the good fortune not to have read before I walked into the theatre. That was at La Mama ETC, an off-off-Broadway space in the East Village, and very good. ( Read more... )

Measure for Measure at the Barbican, when I had an extra day free in London before or after some convention or other; I was unimpressed, by play and performers, but to be fair I picked it because there were tickets available, not because I particularly wanted to see that play.

Romeo and Juliet, a few times. Also * Shakespeare's R and J*, which assumes the audience is familiar with the play that the characters are clandestinely performing.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, a (poor-quality) videotape of the Flying Karamazov Brothers' production. I note here that one of the times I saw them for a couple of hours of "juggling and cheap theatrics" they referred to themselves as "the only vaudevillians on Broadway."

Beyond that: I think I've seen Macbeth, Othello, and Richard III, and have a vague feeling I may have seen Julius Caesar.

I also saw something at the reconstructed Globe in London, a couple of decades ago, but mostly what I remember is the building, and that I bought a groundling ticket for five pounds, online when that wasn't a common way to book, because I wanted the experience, and was a lot younger and had better joints; I wouldn't try it now.

I may have seen another comedy or two; I don't remember seeing any of the other tragedies.

Ancillary material:

I've seen Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, first a live production in a black-walled squash court and then the film version. The almost-bare stage in the squash court was just right for this. (One of the student theatre groups when I was at Yale did three different Stoppard plays, in different semesters, in the same space.)

I may have seen West Side Story before I saw Romeo and Juliet, but I think I read/studied the play in English class before seeing either.

Jo Walton put on a staged reading of her Shakespeare's "Tam Lin," as considered canonical on Barrayar, as part of her wedding festivities, though I don't remember much about it. (That was almost two decades ago, and it was a busy weekend.)

The Reduced Shakespeare Company, a comedy which offers highlights, for some value thereof, of all of Shakespeare's plays in a couple of hours, with Coriolanus as a TV cooking show.