on my own two feet

I attended the Great River Shakespeare Festival again last night, this time to watch Much Ado About Nothing. I must admit that I stood up during the applause, and not just to stretch my legs after the three hour show. It was easily one of the finest productions of any Shakespeare show I've ever seen.

My applause was not directed so much toward the actors, who were all just fine, but toward the direction.

I don't care for "modernizing" Shakespeare -- placing his shows in more current eras -- and this show was. However, it never once stood out. It never became about the modernization.

But best of all, this show (as well as Richard III) avoided the trap that I refer to as "Shakespeare-speak."

Shakespeare's writing has a very strong rhythm to it (some might call it iambic pentameter) and in nearly every performance of a Shakespeare show I've been to, the actors fall in to the trap of relying heavily on the meter and thus losing the sense of what is being said. Reading a poem for the rhyme and not the meaning.

There were occassions where the actors slipped in to that, but on the whole the GRSF have succeeded in bringing Shakespeare's plays to life. I didn't attend either of the plays in their first year...I've just seen too much mediocre and bad Shakespeare that I didn't want to sit through any more. And sure, people told me it was good, but these are people from the town whose only other theatre experiences are the two local colleges, so what would they really know? And so, I admit, I stood last night. On my own two feet. A standing ovation. For the director, the performers, the festival in general.

Oh yeah, and I'm from Minnesota, too.