Stratford Festival 2017 Photo Comics (part 1)

It's "Stay Sane September"! That means I'll be sharing some of my "greatest hits" from social media and Patreon to keep you entertained while I take the month off in order to avoid burnout, take some theatre trips, and get caught up on various tasks and projects that I have been neglecting. 

Today's installment features some comics I put together during my trip to the Stratford Festival two weeks ago. I deliberately didn't take my computer so that I wouldn't be able to work. However, once I got there I found myself wanting to document my theatre-going, so I downloaded all the official production photos, ran them through a basic comic app, and here they are.

First up was Timon of Athens, which I previously saw 13 years ago, when I was far too immature to appreciate this famously hard-to-appreciate play. Here's how it unfolded:

While I'm still not particularly fond of the play itself, I thought this was a great production - very clear and comprehensible, with excellent acting, especially by Joe Ziegler, who managed to somehow make me not lose all interest in Timon once he slid to the "UNRELENTINGLY BITTER" end of the spectrum. 

I then saw Thomas Middleton's The Changeling. This was my first Middleton (not counting his possible collaborations with Shakespeare) and it was a doozy:

This was an intense play. I'm struck by how very different Middleton feels to Shakespeare as far as the language and characterizations are concerned. It all feels much more melodramatic, with the result that I empathize less with the characters involved, but enjoy all the horrible, over-the-top atrocities that occur. 

Next up was Romeo and Juliet. We all know how this one goes, right?

Confession: I'm really really really sick of Romeo and Juliet. It's just done ALL the TIME, and it's always pretty much the same, and you can't seem to get away from it. However, this production managed to rekindle my interest in the play, thanks primarily to the ludicrously engaging performances of the two leads, Sara Farb and Antoine Yared. 

Finally, I saw The Breathing Hole, a new play commissioned by the Stratford Festival. It goes like this:

I really loved this production, and not just because the bears are ADORABLE and PERFECT and LOVELY. Apart from the bears (who were adorable and perfect and lovely), my favorite scene was one in which two Inuit hunters meet and try to communicate with British explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew. It was perfectly written and acted. 

Anyways, that's all for now! Tune in Thursday for another "Stay Sane September" installment!

Upcoming Events

TOMORROW: September 6: Stratford Festival Forum - Willy Shakes: Fanboy

WHO: Me! And also Conor McCreery of the Kill Shakespeare comic book series.
WHAT: Panel discussion on Shakespeare in pop culture and graphic novels. Part of the Stratford Festival Forum series of events. 
WHEN: Wednesday, September 6, 10:45am
WHERE: Chalmers Lounge, Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario.
WHY: Because they asked me! 
HOW: Buy tickets at the Stratford Festival website. 

September 28: Cincinnati Museum Insights Lecture

WHO: Me! Again!
WHAT: Talk followed by Q&A on the development of Good Tickle Brain and approaches to making Shakespeare accessible to new audiences. 
WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 7:30pm
WHERE: The University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning
WHY: Because they have a cool Shakespeare exhibit going on right now! 
HOW: Reserve a FREE ticket at the Cincy Museum website!

The Stratford Festival 2017 Season... in 3 Panels!

Spring is in the air, which means the Stratford Festival's season is getting underway, so it's about time for me to put together a handy guide to the plays that will be appearing on their myriad stages this year. This season the theme is "Questions of Identity".

We start with one of my all-time favorite musicals:

Then we have one of my all-time favorite piratical swashbucklers:

And then this play. I guess it's a classic of some sort, I dunno...

From Shakespearean classic to Gilbert and Sullivan classic:

I've written a theme song for this next play. It goes like this: "Who lives in a hole and acts quite beastly? SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS! Embittered and dirty and misanthropic is he. SPONGETIMON ATHENSPANTS!"

Then, for all your gender-bending needs, we have what is probably my favorite Shakespearean comedy:

It may seem like writing a three-panel summary of a play is a fairly straightforward endeavor. Unfortunately, this is only true when the play itself is relatively straightforward, unlike our next offering:

"After many confusions" is code for "too much stupid stuff happened for me to adequately distill in this format."

Then it's time for a play by one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, Thomas Middleton:

There's a whole complicated subplot that I haven't even bothered to address here. Anyways. Keeping with the "bodies everywhere" theme, we have this classical offering:

Up next are a couple of new plays, so I may not be 100% accurate with these summaries. First is a follow-up to The Last Wife, Kate Hennig's play about the life of Katherine Parr. This one revolves around a young Elizabeth I and her highly-problematic relationship with Thomas Seymour:

The Breathing Hole is another new play by Colleen Murphy. I may not have all the details right, but the important thing to remember here is that it stars a polar bear.

These two new Canadian plays are followed by a pair of French plays, one classic:

...and one a bit more contemporary:

The final play of Stratford's season is The Komagata Maru Incident. It's framed in a very metatheatrical way, which I'm going to totally skip over here and just tell you what is being metatheatrically portrayed. 

(Stick figures don't do "metatheatrical" very well....)

And that's the Stratford Festival's 2017 season! Speaking of which, I will be participating in the Festival's Forum this season as part of a panel entitled "Willy Shakes: Fanboy". Here are the details:

WHO: Me and the Kill Shakespeare guys (Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery)
WHAT: A panel discussion on Shakespeare, comics, graphic novels, and whatever else.
WHEN: Tuesday, September 6, 10:45am
WHERE: The Chalmers Lounge at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, ON
WHY: Because they asked me to and it sounded really cool.
HOW: You can check out the details and buy tickets online!

If you're in the Stratford area, I hope to see you there!

REVIEW: "Breath of Kings" at the Stratford Festival

Here is my review of the Stratford Festival's productions of Breath of Kings: Rebellion and Breath of Kings: Redemption. They're essentially two halves of the same production, so I'm lumping them together. This is what the general story is:

And here's what I thought of it:

EXTRA THOUGHTS (because I can't fit them all into a comic):

I have been deeply immersed in Shakespeare's history plays for decades now, so I am completely incapable of figuring out how accessible and understandable this production is to people unfamiliar with the plays and the history behind it. I thought that Abbey's adaptation was very clear in highlighting the important beats of the story as it unfolded, but at this point I could see these plays in an entirely foreign language and still know what was going on. If you saw this production and weren't that familiar with the history plays, please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought!

There are lots of great performances in these plays, particularly Tom Rooney as Richard II (bringing Richard's wry, self-deprecating, and theatrical sense of humor to the forefront), and Geraint Wyn Davies as Falstaff (one of those casting notices where you nod your head and say "Yep. That was the right choice.") However, I just wanted to give a special mention to Carly Street, who plays a handful of characters including Thomas Mowbray, Lady Percy, the Douglas, and the Archbishop of York, and was unspeakably badass as all of them. A good subtitle for these plays would be "Carly Street Yelling At Men And Showing Them How To Behave", and it's all glorious. 

The set probably deserves a mention. For Rebellion, the stage is covered in a brown mulch that looks like earth, which is progressively scarred, disturbed, and tossed around as Richard's reign decays, revealing an interlocking stone floor beneath it. In Redemption, large chunks of the this stone floor are physically uprooted throughout the action, until, after the battle of Agincourt, the stage resembles the aftermath of an earthquake. It was a bit fussy at times, but very visually striking. 

It is (understandably) very rare to be able to see all four of these plays performed in the same season with the same cast, which is a pity as they are inextricably linked together. The Breath of Kings adaptation is a great way to see them all placed within their proper context, without having to sit through twelve straight hours of history plays. While obviously a lot of text has been removed, it has been by and large done in a very elegant and rational way, and the resulting plays are well worth watching. 

REVIEW: "All My Sons" at the Stratford Festival

As I've said before, I'm pretty bad at writing reviews because (a) I tend to like everything and (b) if I don't like something, I don't want to make anyone feel bad by saying so. So it was with some trepidation that I decided to review the Stratford Festival's production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, because I have disliked all my past encounters with Arthur Miller and didn't see how that was possibly going to change.

Before I start my review, this is what All My Sons is about:

As you can see, there's a lot of angst. I'm allergic to angst. So... how did I like it?

Seriously, this was really confusing for me because I went in 100% sure that I would enjoy the performances but hate the play... but I ended up loving EVERYTHING.

I'm not making this up, you guys. I enjoyed an Arthur Miller play. Send help. 

REVIEW: "As You Like It" at the Stratford Festival

I've discovered that I'm pretty terrible at writing reviews because (a) I tend to like everything and (b) if I don't like something, I don't want to make anyone feel bad by saying so. Fortunately, I liked the Stratford Festival's latest production of As You Like It. 

In case you've never seen As You Like It before, here's what happens in it.

No, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. No, you shouldn't worry about it. Just enjoy. 

As You Like It is playing at the Stratford Festival until October 22. If you've ever wanted to be a tree in the forest of Arden, this is your big chance. 

The Stratford Festival 2016 Season... in 3 Panels!

If theatre is my drug, then the Stratford Festival is my dealer. Here's what they've got on the playbill for their upcoming season:

The only thing I really don't like about A Chorus Line is every time I do any work related to A Chorus Line, I immediately get the song "Tits & Ass" stuck in my head for the next several hours. 

It's the play adaptation of the movie about a play! I'm looking forward to this. 

Classic. Can't go wrong. Unless, you know, someone says MACBETH...

I'm going to make an effort to see this, even though I am decidedly not an Arthur Miller fan. Everyone always spends too much time being acerbically miserable for my tastes. 

I love the Narnia books, so I'm always excited to see a stage adaptation of its first installment. Because MAGIC. 

This season's production is set in Newfoundland. If you wanted to, you could sign up to be taught a traditional Newfoundland dance and then be invited up during the performance to dance it with the cast. I thought about it briefly, and then I remembered (a) I can't dance, and (b) even if I could dance, the thought of dancing in front of actual people is such an alien concept that my mind can't even begin to process it. 

I love Sondheim. People often call Sondheim the Shakespeare of our age, which isn't really fair because, let's face it, Sondheim hasn't killed nearly as many characters as Shakespeare has. But I love Sondheim. Don't get me started. I will sing at you. 

The first part of a two-part adaptation by Graham Abbey of Richard II, Henry IV part 1 & 2, and Henry V. While I love the history plays in all their lengthy and occasionally long-winded gloriousness, I'm really looking forward to this. 

I mean... four history plays for the price of two! I'm hoping Abbey goes ahead and puts together Death of Kings, condensing the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III. MOAR HISTORY PLAYS PLEEZE.

..yeah, I got nothing. Pretty sure she doesn't actually turn into a giant rabbit, though. Oh well.

This will be... I think only my second time seeing Moliere on stage. I read Tartuffe in high school, but somehow haven't gotten around to seeing it, and I saw The Misanthrope at Stratford a couple years back. This one sounds like a lot of fun. 

AAARRGGH IBSEN. I pretty much loathed reading A Doll's House in high school and have avoided his stuff like the plague ever since. Should probably actually see Ibsen in performance at least once before I slam that door shut, though. 

OK, so this is a new, contemporary adaptation of the Aeneid, so I have no idea how accurate this is, but there should be people fleeing a thing and journeying to another thing at the very least.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, STRATFORD... oh, wait. You're already doing that.

Good Tickle Brain at the Folger Shakespeare Library!

On Friday, April 29 I will be giving a free pre-show talk at the Folger Theatre in Washington D.C., ahead of a performance of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance of William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged). If you're in the D.C. area, stop by and say hello! For full details, visit the Folger website. 

Review of "Possible Worlds" at the Stratford Festival

Two weekends ago I went up to the Stratford Festival with my co-worker to see Possible Worlds. Here is my review!

Let's get the water thing out of the way: the entire stage was several inches under water. Visually and thematically, it was really really cool, especially given the revelations at the end of the play. However, it also meant that my co-worker and I, being obsessed with the physical workings of theatre, spent a lot of time thinking things like "I wonder what sort of non-slip coating they put on the stage," "I'm pretty sure their shoes are all made out of rubber'" "what are those banker's boxes really made of, they can't be cardboard or they'd be disintegrating in the water," and other such ruminations. 

Again, it is to the actors' eternal credit that the production managed to keep us engaged in the story (and not just the striking methods of storytelling) throughout the performance.  It was, all in all, a mesmerizing production and, despite having reservations about the source material, we both really enjoyed ourselves. 

On the whole (being, as previously mentioned, an inherently frivolous person)  I prefer my plays with more jokes and/or chaotic battle scenes, and less philosophical ruminations on the nature of human imagination and reality, but offhand I can't imagine (ha ha) seeing a better production of this play.

You might bring a towel with you, though, in case you happen to be seated in the "splash zone"...

Shameless Plug Line: Don't forget to pick up at Good Tickle Brain t-shirt and/or comic book at the Good Tickle Brain Shoppe!