Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Open Air’s 2019 Dream is Woke But Not Funny

15 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Poetic Blog, Review, Shakespeare, Stage Review, Theater, Theatre

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Donkey1

—by Bill Watkins 7/15/2019

***

I appreciate interpretation.

We all interpret, digest, form-fit everything we see into bite size pieces and in a way that makes sense or is fun for us.  William Shakespeare’s work has been interpreted and changed to fit opinions, palates and fill theaters for hundreds of years, and God bless all who give entertainment on stage a go!

But for me, sadly, Dominic Hill’s new presentation of Shakespeare’s hilarious A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park’s Open Air Theatre failed to be hilarious despite its very woke changes to format.  Having seen the play at the beautiful Open Air Theatre in 1994 created a high bar very difficult to reach or surpass, and in the end: I walked out of the 2019 production last Tuesday night two-thirds in, hopeful to find more laughs at my youth hostel before bed.

Nick Bottom is a man.  Played as a man, the donkey he becomes man-like and mannish, with a man’s voice, and supposed even to be a heterosexual man when Titania the fairy queen doth make him nervous by her overt attentions in Act III.  His nerves made me laugh in 1994, so much so my stomach began to hurt!  But Dominic Hill’s cast of professionals failed to tickle me thus—not because they were unprofessional or untalented, but because the needed heterosexual tension was missing from the woman-on-woman Titania/Bottom scenes in his version, as he chose a woman for the role of Nick Bottom.

Very Woke and #MeToo of Dominic, but not very funny, in this traveler’s opinion.  I’ll give it even Cute, but I did not pay money to see a show my last night in London before turning back to stolen Native American land in the States to smile… I paid to laugh!!

Kieran Hill’s Theseus/Oberon was engaging, the theatre setting as beautiful and enchanting as ever, and Susan Wokoma’s Bottom was funny enough in initial scenes, but failed to create for me the heterosexual tension needed to be funny with Titania in that magical, Shakespeare-created forest of wonder and mischief.

Myra McFadyen’s Puck was odd and robotic, but could have been overcome with a straighter interpretation of a funny as-written play.  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”—even if your change is “woke and with it!!!”

Bottom’s Curse

01 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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We want to do it all; be all
things for all people, please them
all—have them hold us in their
so very high esteem, be paid,
praised and sleep.

“I can do it!” we volunteer, often
for things we do not well, but
have within us a self-confidence
that knows we do that thing
better than most!

Then one day we wake up,
shake off the hangover—feel a
little tired of holding a flag
for big groups of others, as its
weight lags and lags.

Truth washes over us in the
shower, some better yet find
lines off shore, paddle out and
fall in to be cleansed of all the
self-told lies mirrored out;

We give to God but not enough,
reserving really hard times for
wine and beer.

We claim belief in a Nazarene
teacher, who pointed up not
to himself, said about your life
to never fear!  The birds are fed,
God clothing fields with grass,

and you?  You are okay, maybe
just stay in your lane a little more,
do your achieving there.  Look at
Solomon with his one bestowed
great trait,

David could sing and dance, very
blessed, Jesus a teacher—

And you?  What, are you the first
down the pipe to master all trades
at once!?  Haha, you have been
cursed with Shakespeare’s bottom,
you’re an ass,

I say with all loving embrace.  Wake
up striving for the stars, and find
yourself falling on your face—

You are not good.  Neither am I;
we get a few talents, pray to god and
thank, then with that one or two
things we do well let’s go out now
and to the world supply.

Wide is the Path

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Nature, Philosophy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Religion

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The narrow to “heaven” is a hefty
mount, a lofty walk and a harrowing
drop—

the leap it requires of faith, fasting
and prayer?

Atheism, wordlessness, meditation
and just being there?

Hard turns, listening, being, breathing?

A rose by any other name as sweet,
brevity the soul of it, god or Shmod
you decide what to call that which
yields its famous bliss—

words ascribed to it in English
being “Peace of mind.”

It’s hard to have a firm view, open
up, and listen wholeheartedly to another;
but to do so allows a soul to advance
toward childhood,

life a journey of return to learned
senses without words, then a
departure of body leaving spirit
and words, ideas which never die
no matter how many killed in the
name of “National Security.”

Wide is the Path to Destruction,
and Many are On It.

Some call “Jesus” religion; I do not;
I call the Son a Sun, the art of war
being to never wage it.

The true artist restores peace when
out of alignment, moving on without
celebration, without declaration of victory,
for a combat yielding injury is never
cause célèbre.

Tend to those injured, and start to
glimpse the road less traveled, build
your rock, ascending and secure, on
the bed of weedless sunshine providing
no rain to the cowards, no judgment to
the fallen, no gifts to the barren;

It is dry, the valley of history, with
all its un-amended sins and mistakes.

If you stop reading and talking long
enough you see the rainbow in the rain;
the end of pain,

The coming of solace for the argument
that Higher Power must exist.

Why not call it God?

Because that word offends those abused
by those who would use a Name to harm.

So fall.

Let the words go, and let Mom embrace
you after we demolish the concrete,
find the stones, the path back

to Nature.

College Scam

31 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in Education, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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John Stuart Mill was the first to go through
what we went through, the modern
liberal arts education.

He had a nervous breakdown, before any
of that education was of any use.

In all the classroom work, and work, and
work some more he had never

learned how to Live.

***

The basics in life; feelings expressed, a friend
with whom to talk about real things, no guide
asking him what his dreams were.

Parents’ dreams are another thing, and while
I believe in honoring them, that does not
mean doing their will over God’s for you.

Who is asking you what your dreams are?

If you are a child, and no one is supporting your
dreams, break out now before it’s too late.

A nervous breakdown awaits, if you think
“college” will sort all out for you some day.

Sort it out now.  Live Today!!!!

“And ascending and secure,
Shall tomorrow find its place.”

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

Alcohol for burning things, youth for free expression
toward our dreams.

Obstacles, teaching Gradgrinds driving facts
as fictions, such as “college” prep over Life
Prep we must overcome

“Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.”

Break out or breakdown, live your true
purpose or be sheep to shear and slaughter
on the way to shattered hope.

Choose a higher power, step away for
truth to shine, get strong and build your
spiritual home invincible against

the wide pound of rain that has been
other peoples’ ideas for you.

America

02 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in America, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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Is nothing without the meaning we give,
the soul of place—words we sing, Amerigo
Vespucci coining something, a coast with waves
and life, indigenous and white.

America is nothing, words without meaning
until we pray and bring in Gods to bless, the
day to day rising like a tide, word to word we
try to match feelings inside.

You look at the world, our word for it, try to
get past Borgesian fictions to accept that words
are what we have to conjure and communicate.
We settle, call things “things”—dream.

America is nothing without the dream we bring,
we fill an empty vessel, the uncarved block
of the Tao Te Ching.  A rose by any other name would
smell as sweet, Shakespeare meat,

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
wants it down in Frostian weeds.  Dust thou
art except the soul, and the demons you fight
in others, immigrants, outsiders

are really inside of the fighter.  Our current
“president” watches a lot of TV, some say this
candidate of hate accentuates the divide the
devil tries.

Good news: you don’t have to do anything.
Stand tall or low, firm or soft—do nothing.
Gandhi wanted to change their minds, not kill
them for universal weaknesses shared by all.

Trump talks taxes during a lethal storm, an evil
brought by the wind of bigotry, hating black
people and women—their turn to lead.  Right and
left, all spending too much,

money we do not have, playing God with promises
impossible to keep, getting elected with
private campaign money the eye of the storm
putting money, not ideas… in government.

We kick the natives and their god out,
run our slaves then pay them not, kill JFK
and accept the official story, for to delve in
too deep gets you killed, CIA diabolical feats.

Mark Lane defended Oswald perfectly from
afar, indicted CIA skillfully for anyone with time
to read. They call our president “powerful,”
a laugh, God’s got a bigger stack of chips—

just think about that.  Asymmetry of information
leans on Trump campaign dudes until we might
segue back to 1972, Nixon in flames, Congress
to blame, or is it Samuel for asking for a king?

Lying every other line is consistent with guilt,
the cover up worse than the crime, corrupt
politicians fattening all the time, and what could
we expect with such a wide path to Evil?

Jesus and the elders were right, but we keep
looking around for an easier fight, until a few accept
the narrow road to heaven, seeing we can’t do
much so wait, ask for a blessing, aspire to patience.

We sometimes embark on geographic solutions,
head off where the grass is greener, the whole
discovery period in Europe one of these but worth it
to advance and bring the world closer to itself.

One click away from the other side of the planet seems
a large feat while a photon of light travels seven times
around it, there must be larger powers, atheists,
there must be!!

The wide narrows when we call out pharmaceutical
ads in their evil, C2H5OH the flammable thing sold
as “drink” by devil’s agents, sport itself a great
gateway to alcoholism and divorce.

While writing this screed, the poem looked back
got hit in the front, wearing headphones, looking
down at a cell while walking—which is worse,
that or driving?

Gan the word for eyesight placed first by Okinawan
karate warriors… Beware!!  Could a man rightly
think he could at least have a Cast Away moment
with his first crush, say good-bye?

God bless us to less whining, more striving—less
expecting on the grateful mission of knowing we
don’t know very much, “America” just a word of
many, a polytheistic remedy to time’s forgotten

mystery, Heaven is peace of mind and “other
such dreams,” life…

“it’s like anything else,” Wood Allen feeds, movies
are what they seem, the daytime soap opera
dream washing out our fatigue, giving us space
to think.

America, lol, let’s look at devils within, be
unafraid looking back, making amends, smoothing
out our belligerence.  Education of the MLK and
Gandhi level takes a special focus,

God bless us to it, the fight for justice.  Never bow
to evil, gird us up, God—let’s beat the devil, cast
him behind;  finally cast away, we can be the knight
in our own epic, be heroes in the strife—

Use words because they’re there, their meaning
growing with every blessing.  God bless these words,
even “America,” and all the other nations needing
you, not men as king.