Keats and Yeats are on your side, but you lose

[sovay]

I wish to register a complaint with the universe that I had no idea that Eddie Shields—the beautiful Gaveston of the ASP's Edward II—was playing Christopher Marlowe in a local stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love until tonight, otherwise known as too late. I know it's my own fault for not reading the arts section and I appreciate that other Boston-area directors have recognized his obvious affinity for Marlowe; it bodes well for his appearances in future. But I would have liked to be able to take advantage of this one!

I spent the afternoon with my cousins and Fox for the first time since before Arisia. It was good. Assorted links.

1. Dr. Kate Lister debunks the Victorian vibrator myth, with entertaining commentary and horrifying illustrations: "Once you have moved past the fact that the doctor and patient strongly resemble escapees from Area 51 . . ."

2. My brother and his family are planning to drive across Canada next summer. I have commended them to the stone dragon of Alberta.

3. This entire issue of poetry from Aotearoa/New Zealand is very good, but at the moment Kate Camp's "Gulls," Nina Powles' "Some titles for my childhood memoir," Tim Upperton's "The Truth about Palmerston North," and Gregory O'Brien and John Puhiatau Pule's "Song of the coral brain" and "Canticle of the hydrosphere" are especially sticking with me.

4. I feel that I should not discover people by their obituaries, but I think I need to hear the music of Coco Schumann.

5. I know people with this aesthetic: Ruth Maddison, "Women's dance, St Kilda Town Hall, Melbourne, 1985."

Comments

[gwynnega]

That Aotearoa/New Zealand poetry issue looks great. If memory serves, I visited Palmerston North one of the times I visited New Zealand in the 1980s. (Also, one of the first times I ever had my poetry published, it was in an anthology published in New Zealand!)

[sovay]

If memory serves, I visited Palmerston North one of the times I visited New Zealand in the 1980s.

I have never been to New Zealand. I have never been to the Southern Hemisphere. I would like to; I want to see the different stars.

(Also, one of the first times I ever had my poetry published, it was in an anthology published in New Zealand!)

Nice!

[cyphomandra]

If you do make it to New Zealand, you would be very welcome to come and visit! Alas, I do not live in Palmerston North.

[sovay]

If you do make it to New Zealand, you would be very welcome to come and visit! Alas, I do not live in Palmerston North.

I wouldn't turn an invitation down just for that! Thank you.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, it's annoying when you narrowly miss something good, though! Worse than missing it by miles.

4. Well, it's maybe not ideal, but better late than never!

[sovay]

Aw, it's annoying when you narrowly miss something good, though! Worse than missing it by miles.

It must say something about the human brain that it feels so much worse, even though rationally missing a performance by an evening is just as bad as fifty years: it's still over and done. But if only I had known! Or time-traveled by three or four hours!

Well, it's maybe not ideal, but better late than never!

This is a fair point. I'm just always sorry to find out afterward, if it could be helped. [edit] This is really the same problem as the first one, isn't it?

[thisbluespirit]

I suppose it depends how much longer after you read the obit! (I tend to come in very late these days... I mean, my downfall with James Maxwell was the obit, definitely, and it was twenty years old.) I joke that I judge a person I like by the quality of their obituary these days, but, um, I do like some living people!!

(My and my sister once very seriously considered going to see Cymbeline at the Barbican and then didn't. I discovered in the height of my David Collings phase that it was the one with David Collings and Tom Hiddleston. So, if you find a time-travel machine or something, let me know, although actually, in that case, I've got some TV archives to raid while we're at it...)

[sovay]

My and my sister once very seriously considered going to see Cymbeline at the Barbican and then didn't. I discovered in the height of my David Collings phase that it was the one with David Collings and Tom Hiddleston.

Ouch!

(I had the opposite experience with a stage production, but I was once invited by my god-aunt to attend a convention when I was twelve which I refused because it sounded like a lot of crowded strangers and later it turned out that was the year Ursula K. Le Guin was Guest of Honor at Readercon, so I never met her.)

If a time machine crosses my path, you'll hear about it.

[thisbluespirit]

If a time machine crosses my path, you'll hear about it.

Yesterday, indeed, I expect. ;-)

[desireearmfeldt]

Marlowe was rather show-stealing at the Speakeasy. :)

[sovay]

Marlowe was rather show-stealing at the Speakeasy.

skygiants linked this photo. He looked like he should have been.

What did you think of the rest of the production?

[desireearmfeldt]

As you can perhaps infer from the photo, he was about the flamingest Marlowe imaginable. :)

As for the production, well, I have a lot of thoughts about the adaptation of the script (about which I kind of want to make a post of my own but may or may not get around to, given that I haven't done it yet). But as far as this specific production goes...hm. It was fine but not dazzling? Some miscellaneous thoughts:

I'm not sure whether or not I like the aesthetic they went for of deliberately anachronistic/mashed-up costuming -- though, as they noted in the program, it certainly is congruent with the script being deliberately mashed-up in that way.

Marlowe was quite good, Henslowe was good (and OMG, that actor has looked approximately the same age for 20 years...), Fennyman was fun. Will did a fine job but apparently didn't leave all that strong an impression on me?

Viola was somehow completely generic. Like, she did a fine job, but she was indistinguishable from any woman on TV or in the movies. I'm not sure to what extent that's partly the fault of the script, vs. the directing/acting alone.

I was not keen on the directorial choice to make Ned Allyn an over-the-top histrionic ham. It meant that in his couple of moments of seriousness -- which are extremely effective in the movie -- he wasn't able to drop down into seeming like a real human being, and so those moments lost their weight.

I was annoyed by the fact that the fight scenes -- which were really quite extended -- were choreographed with no real sense of the difference between prop weapons/characters who only knew stage combat, and real weapons/characters who actually knew how to kill people. There are at least two fights where someone with a real sword charges into a rehearsal and starts fighting actors who have to retaliate as best they can, but it all just looked the same.

[sovay]

As you can perhaps infer from the photo, he was about the flamingest Marlowe imaginable.

The vest among other things suggested it.

(I rather seriously want to see this actor as Mephistopheles now. He was a really fine Gaveston.)

There are at least two fights where someone with a real sword charges into a rehearsal and starts fighting actors who have to retaliate as best they can, but it all just looked the same.

I can see that being very difficult to parse if you can't see the difference!

I didn't even know a stage version existed, so I would love to see the post of your own about the differences between the two versions. I saw the film when it came out, and remember enjoying it, but I barely watched any movies then.

[asakiyume]

A tree, unshaded
takes whatever
shape the sky
chooses for it

Nice. I like those two illustrated poems. I haven't checked out the others yet.

[sovay]

I haven't checked out the others yet.

Enjoy whenever you get to them!

[drwex]

The use of the word "buzzkill" to describe debunking a myth about vibrators has me giggling entirely too much.

[moon_custafer]

“Except the table legs thing is also myth, but that’s another post for another day.”

I wish I could recall which historian I saw argue that while the Victorian age contained people who were horrified by the merest implication that women even had legs, and also people who were having kinkster orgies every night, these were only rarely the *same* people.

[sovay]

I wish I could recall which historian I saw argue that while the Victorian age contained people who were horrified by the merest implication that women even had legs, and also people who were having kinkster orgies every night, these were only rarely the *same* people.

That makes too much sense to become part of pop culture.

(When it was the same people, though, I want to know who they were.)

[sovay]

The use of the word "buzzkill" to describe debunking a myth about vibrators has me giggling entirely too much.

NO SUCH THING.

[cmcmck]

Having gone to uni in Kit Marlowe's home town, I have more than a little liking for Kind Kit's work.

[sovay]

Having gone to uni in Kit Marlowe's home town, I have more than a little liking for Kind Kit's work.

I had to read Doctor Faustus for a class my freshman year of college; I read through the entire play aloud with a friend. That did it for me.

[choco_frosh]

1. Dr. Kate Lister debunks the Victorian vibrator myth, with entertaining commentary and horrifying illustrations: "Once you have moved past the fact that the doctor and patient strongly resemble escapees from Area 51 . . ."

...I failed to notice the "horrifying illustrations" bit of this. Not so much for the truly horrifying ones as for the, uh, ones further down...
This is a bit of a problem if you're reading this at work.

[sovay]

...I failed to notice the "horrifying illustrations" bit of this. Not so much for the truly horrifying ones as for the, uh, ones further down...
This is a bit of a problem if you're reading this at work.

I DIDN'T THINK I HAD TO TAG A POST ABOUT VICTORIAN VIBRATORS NSFW.

(I will always regret not having the money to buy the omnibus of something like five Victorian pornographic novels I found once at the Book Trader Café in New Haven. I had never seen so many unironic instances of the verb "frig.")

[ethelmay]

I always forget that silent films lasted into the 1930s.

[sovay]

I always forget that silent films lasted into the 1930s.

And a good thing, too, or we wouldn't have Louise Brooks' Lulu.

[coraline]

i have a copy of the complete "the pearl" and yes, that was roughly my response too.

i'm sad and disappointed but also not exactly surprised about the debunking. but still sad, it was such a lovely theory (hounded to death by a horde of ugly facts).