Shakespeare Gone Horribly Wrong

[chasingtides]

Shakespeare last night was... odd. Adding a Grease theme and musical numbers to a Midsummer's Night's Dream is unsettling at best. Making Hermia a strange cross of good girl virgin and BDSM sub, Helena a tall red head with an unfortunate habit of being thrown over men's shoulders caveman style, Lysander a James Dean wannabe, Demetrius an oily country club boy, and Hippolyta Theseus' Jackie-O like unwilling bride made the play a little awkward and uncomfortable. Robin Goodfellow as a tiny man in a brightly coloured suit and top hat worked well though, as did the Mechanicals dressed as mechanics. I'm still a little ambivilent about Hippolyta and Theseus being played by the same actors as Titania and Oberon.

Aaargh. The musical numbers and Hermia are still bothering me a lot. I don't particularly mind portrayal of Hermia as a BDSM sub in theory. I mean, I suppose it could be done well. But this was pretty distasteful and then she was very much shrieky in a "don't touch me" sort of way - to the very guy she had, only a few scenes previous, asked to spank her. It didn't work. And musical numbers, complete with singing and dance routines, are fine in small doses, but really, really don't belong in Shakespeare.

However, today I am sick. I've slept for about 80% of the day and want to go back to bed. I've had a headache all day to the point where I'm tempted to take an Imitrex on the theory that it can't hurt, even though I'm not seeing auras.

I've been working on extraonions' livelongnmarry story (10 000 words, prompts of her choice) and I'm at 3988 words. I wish I felt better so I could work on it more. AUs feel really, really awkward to write. It feels more like I'm writing an original story than fan fic and I'm concerned that I'm pulling too far away from the canon for it to work, while at the same time can't figure out another way to work it.

Comments

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

Oh Jesus I wish. No, it was an acting group from the College of the Holy Cross and included a fair number of adults (the youngest folks in the group appeared to be rising seniors in college).

Also, Helena needed to learn to wear a bra. A lot.