Open up your mouth, but the melody is broken

[sovay]

Only a day or two late, I saw a classic new moon in the old moon's arms as I walked around the neighborhood just after sunset, the reflection-white crescent and its charcoal-colored cradle like an eclipse in monochrome. The sky was its usual clear apple-blue in the east and then sank. I am not sure I have ever had this much difficulty with the early dark between the clocks falling back and the solstice. I am awake most of the days and there still doesn't seem to be any light in them.

I slept last night. I would like not to have to record it as a milestone. It feels a little unnecessarily on the nose that I was woken out of some complex dream by a phone call from a doctor's office. Most of them lately have some unsurprising insecurity in them: slow-motion cataclysm, as if it makes much difference from being awake. Last night, something about a house with tide-lines on its walls, as if it regularly flooded to the beams.

Describing the 1978 BBC As You Like It to spatch made me realize how few of Shakespeare's comedies I have actually seen when compared with the tragedies, the late romances, the history or the problem plays. A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night would be the predictable exceptions in that I am verging on more productions of either than I can count without thinking about it, but I am three Winter's Tales to zero Comedies of Errors. I've seen Timon of Athens and not All's Well That Ends Well. One Richard II and neither of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. It begins to feel accidental that I caught The Merry Wives of Windsor in college.

I really appreciate asakiyume sending me Hen Ogledd's "Scales Will Fall" (2025) and ashlyme alerting me to the trans-Neptunian existence of the sednoid Ammonite.

Comments

[gwynnega]

made me realize how few of Shakespeare's comedies I have actually seen when compared with the tragedies, the late romances, the history or the problem plays

Same. I watched a lot of those BBC productions while I was studying Shakespeare in college (because the audiovisual department had them on tape), but my Shakespeare courses covered fewer of the comedies than the other works. I remember especially loving the BBC Twelfth Night.

[choco_frosh]

I really appreciate [personal profile] asakiyume sending me Hen Ogledd's "Scales Will Fall" (2025) and [personal profile] ashlyme alerting me to the trans-Neptunian existence of the sednoid Ammonite.

Those are both extremely excellent!

[asakiyume]

One Richard II and neither of the Two Gentlemen of Verona. --This was a very fun sentence to read. One could do some fun math with it ;-)

I sent you "Scales Will Fall" right before it reached its interlude. I wasn't quite sure what the cinematic storytelling was doing at that point and afterward, but I really liked the first third of it, and the faces, costumes, and landscape were absorbing all the way through. On balance, I think yes! I liked it. (Plus apparently it was filmed in Berwick upon Tweed, where my cousin and your film interest Alex Knox lived.)

[alexxkay]

I recommend the Comedy of Errors headlined by The Flying Karamazov Brothers: https://youtu.be/dwYyrbX9LUY?si=fMDLdgvG7wnXEqRA

[cmcmck]

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.

[larryhammer]

You really should track down the Flying Karamozov Brothers' production of Comedy of Errors. It's more farce than juggling, but they manage to get enough of the latter to make it a real FKB performance.

[oracne]

Sounds like some Shakespeare goals might be happening?

[thisbluespirit]

and not All's Well That Ends Well.

The BBC Shakespeare version of this is supposed to be the best (in artistical terms) BBC Shakespeare. The director loves doing tableaux vivant in the style of Jacobean Dutch paintings.

I think by now you can imagine exactly how this went down with me.

(So far the only one I liked less was Timon of Athens (so that was a sentence of yours there, that was, lol), although that went more in the category of: maaybe when it comes to the obscurer and often co-written parts of the canon I should check what it is before I watch it and not just go, ooh, unspoilered Shakespeare! I feel it would definitely have gone better in that case, lol. Also it was one of the later ones where the BBC eschewed scenery. When the BBC Shakespeare are being Artistic in the 'better' later series they tend to a) have no scenery and a lot of canvas on the floor in a giant echoing studio or b) go in for tableaux vivant Dutch paintings).

*hugs as to the rest* May sleep become a boring, regular occurrence! And many more moons to you. <3

[skygiants]

but have you seen my weird kind of bad favorite As You Like It!

asjdf;ldjsk ETA: i just realized this whole conversation was kicked off by describing an As You Like It. I can read normally, I'm just extremely jetlagged

[rushthatspeaks]

At some point here I need to start going through film versions of Love's Labours Lost, because I've table-read it twice now on Discord and it has turned out to be one of my favorite Shakespeares. Possibly one of my favorite plays, period. And I absolutely do not trust Kenneth Branagh with it; he wouldn't know a delicate touch if it lightly brushed by him. He's very good at many things and airiness is not one of them.

I don't know how much you know the play, and I don't know how well it comes across read to oneself. Table-read, it became immediately obvious that it would be an absolute nightmare to stage, require a virtuoso to stage well, and be entirely worth it if somebody did. I haven't seen it go by theatres since I've started looking, though I'm sure it will eventually, and I hope it's well done when it does.

Richard II is the other Shakespeare with which table-reading made me fall in love, and I hope and trust someone has already written the thesis on what it says about the divine right of kings which I babbled at everyone about after we read it. But I haven't the strength to go through JSTOR. Sigh.

Anyway, if you ever run into a good Love's Labours Lost, please do let me know ASAP.

[troisoiseaux]

I am three Winter's Tales to zero Comedies of Errors.

The Comedy of Errors might be my most-viewed Shakespeare comedy, if counting that one production I ended up seeing four times last year by individual viewings and also a middle school production from back in the day...? I'll have to check out the Flying Karamazov Brothers version floating around in the comments.

(Also, speaking of Twelfth Night, this year's NYC Shakespeare in the Park production is available online via PBS through the end of the year and VERY fun.)

[rydra_wong]

Off-topic, but I thought of you: this amazing archive of episodes of the legendary BBC arts and culture documentary series Arena:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwvX-sECzP6pc3DXhmA2dlXOpj74aN-sc