This is gonna be a no-pictures blog, because the internet in the middle of the Irish sea is not fantastic. And I want to finish this blog before I get off the ferry. But I'll post pictures of Dublin as soon as I get internet. YAY!
Right-O. So Monday morning I woke up in Galway and did the usual eating packing chilling thing, before I went to the train station and caught a train back to Dublin. I arrived in the city, and took a tram over to my hostel. I got all checked in and orientated, and then I set out to explore the city.
Now, one of my Dad's friends, who is also the father of a friend of my little sister, and a Comparative Literature professor at UGA (whose class I am taking in the Fall), is from Ireland, so once I got all the details of my trip pinned down, my dad emailed him for suggestions of things to do. Which he then forwarded to me. So I had a pretty good list of things to do in Dublin provided by someone who actually knew what he was talking about.
So I got a map and started on the list he'd given me. My first stop was the James Joyce center. Now, the Irish are VERY proud of their writers. Like, probably 50% of the things I saw in Dublin are in some way connected to Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, or Yeats. Not that I minded. Because I'm a dork.
So the James Joyce Centre was very cool. the building itself was lovely, and there were a couple of exhibitions about the life and works of Dublin's favorite writer. I honestly don't know as much about Joyce as I should. And I haven't yet gotten around to reading Ulysses, but I knew enough to appreciate the exhibition, and was ignorant enough to find it hugely informative. In other news, I want a James Joyce hat. It just looks awesome.
So then I went off in search of the Irish Writers Centre. Now, I got a bit confused, because Dr. O'Neill directed me to the Irish Writers Centre, but it's right next door to the Irish Writers Museum, and I was a bit lost, and both were closed, BUT in a wonderful stroke of luck, I went inside the lobby of the Writers Centre, and found... posters for plays. Plays currently running in Dublin.
Now, we all know that I have an unhealthy obsession with the theatrical arts. And, the 6 months before I came to Spain were REALLY GOOD theatre months for me. I did my Shakespeare program, and I went to NYC, and I saw stuff in Athens. And basically, I saw a lot of really good theatre done by really excellent performers. And especially good Shakespeare.
And then I spent 4 months in a non-English speaking country.
So, when I saw the flyer for a production of Twelfth Night in Dublin that very evening, I was a goner.
Now, I'm willing to admit that I was a little conflicted. Because the other play advertised was An Ideal Husband, which is probably my favorite Oscar Wilde play (I know everyone likes The Importance of Being Ernest, but both the characters and the plot of An Ideal Husband are superb). And I was in Oscar Wilde's hometown. And it was at a very old theatre. And I had seen 2 productions of Twelfth Night this year already.
But what it came down to is that I love Shakespeare. And I've missed live Shakespeare. And I wanted to watch guys in ridiculous costumes with Irish accents running around making bad jokes in Elizabethan English. So I went with Twelfth Night.
What I didn't remember until the next morning is that I had two nights in Dublin. :D
So anyway, once I decided to go to Twelfth Night, I still had several hours before the show, so I kind of wandered. I didn't really go in anything, but I walked around. I tried to find a pub that Dr. O'Neill and recommended for dinner, but I'm not sure I found the right pub, and it didn't sen to serve food, so I wandered back towards both my hostel and the theatre, and stopped at a Mark and Spencers (Which was almost a joke. Because my very first trip to Europe was to England with Monica, and for some reason we always wound up stopping by Mark and Spencers and getting food to eat. Usually on the steps of Saint Paul's. The other thing I ate a lot of on that trip was salt and vinegar potato chips. So whenever I go to London (or apparently to Ireland) those are the two things I feel I have to do before my trip is complete.) and grabbed a couple of microwave dinners.
On the way home I passed the theatre, and ducked in to buy my tickets. The guy at the counter was INCREDIBLY nice. Like, seriously, how do the Irish get to be so nice? I don't understand it. They're always just polite, and amicable, and friendly, and they don't seem to be passive aggressive or secretly hate you. I mean, when they say something like, "I hope you come back sometime soon!" I think they actually mean it.
But anyway, the guy helped me buy my tickets. And it was wonderful, because it was a preview performance, and I'm a student, so I got a seat smack dab in the middle of Row G, one of the most expensive seats in the house, for 15€. Also, at that point I found out that since the play was in previews, it hadn't been cut as much, so it was about half an hour longer than it normally would be (which I was excited about) and that it was a modern production and that the director liked to play around with gender and sexuality in the play. Which is perfect for Twelfth Night, and also something I studied this Summer in Oxford and DC. I'm not sure if "bounced" or "floated" is the best way to describe my exit from the theatre after buying my tickets. I think I'm going with "bounced." It wasn't nearly as graceful as floating.
So, I bounced out of the theatre and back to my hostel, where I cooked my microwave dinners. I ate and read some more of A Song of Ice and Fire (I'm on book 3 now. Traveling is good for my reading schedule.) before retiring upstairs to, like, put on some slightly nicer shoes and brush my hair. Because there are very few things I will willingly make myself look presentable for. Especially when traveling, but theatre is one of them.
So then I headed out to the theatre 5 minutes down the road. The performance was at the Abbey Theatre, which is apparently the National Theatre of Ireland (fancy, I know) and some of the people associated with the theatre participated in the Easter Rising in 1916. And basically it is a much more important and storied institution than I quite realized when I picked up the pink pamphlet with a guy wearing a crown on it in the Irish Writer's Centre.
So, I waited around in the lobby for the play to start, and I went to the bathroom, and I found my seat. And it was SPECTACULAR. Like, couldn't be better. I was at the perfect height and right in the middle. It was fantastic. My only problem with the whole experience was the programs. See, in British, and apparently Irish, theatres, programs aren't free. In fact, it was 5€ for a program. Which was a problem. Because 1) that's expensive for a program, and my mother is Deborah Googe and 2) I'm traveling through Europe. I don't have space for a program! Even if it was worth the money! And I certainly don't have the money to spend on a program I'm not even going to be able to keep! But that was frustrating, because I wanted a program. I like looking at the cast list and reading the director's note and all that jazz. And, in defense of British and Irish theaters, their programs are much more in-depth than the typical American playbill. It usually involves the dramaturge's note, and costuming information, and an essay or two by a professor analyzing the play. And I like that stuff, and if I were not in the situation I was in it probably would have been worth getting the program to read that stuff. But... It wasn't. So I went program-less.
Ok. Fair warning. The following is a pretty extensive review/commentary on the show I saw. If you don't care, you don't have to read it. But I want to talk about it, so I'm just going to put my rambles here. Isn't that what a blog is for?
So, the play was phenomenal. That's the first, and most important thing. I really, really loved it. It was interesting and well done and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the other productions. That is also why I like Shakespeare, because you never know what you're going to get. The first production, that I saw in DC was set in the 1910s and the Lusitania was the inspiration for the shipwreck at the beginning of the play. Then I saw it on Broadway with Stephen Fry, and that production was really concerned about period-accuracy. Like, they had an all-male cast and the costumes were all hand made like they were back in the day, and the whole thing was just as close to Elizabethan as possible. Then the production I saw in Dublin was... modern. Completely and totally. Like, Orsino was a rockstar.
Oh yeah, plot. Let's see how quickly I can do this. (yes, I hear all of you who say I suck at summaries. You're right. Sorry. But I'm gonna give it a go.
SO there are twins: Viola and Sebastian and they get in a shipwreck and are separated. Viola decides to dress up like a man and goes into the service of the Duke Orsino. Orsino is in love with the Countess Olivia. Orsino sends Viola (dressed like a dude) to woo Olivia for him. Viola does her job a little too well, and Olivia falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Viola has fallen for Orsino. Look! An actual love triangle! But then, Sebastian comes back into town and marries Olivia (who thinks he is Viola, but Viola as a man...) and then at the end everybody shows up on stage at the same time and figures out what happened. And then Orsino proposes to Viola, on the condition that she go put on a dress. I wish I was kidding, but that's actually in the script. Oh, Shakespeare.
So, a lot of times, Shakespeare had a plot and a subplot, usually called "A" and "B." A-plots usually involve the upper-class people, and are the "romantic" part of his romantic comedies. B-plots usually involve lower-class people and tend more towards straight comedy. And Twelfth Night has quite a B-plot.
So Olivia has a cousin who is hilariously named Sir Toby Belch. And he is a total party animal. He also hangs out with this guy named Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is trying to woo Olivia. Very, very unsuccessfully. They are helped by lady Olivia's maid Mariah. BUT Olivia's steward, who is as up-tight as they come, hates that they party so much, and yells at them and tells them to go to bed. So, they send a letter to him, supposedly from Olivia, which says that she loves him, and tells him to do all sorts of strange things to prove his love. He does them, and is promptly declared insane. So Toby and Andrew leave him to rot in a very small dark cell. Because he made them go to bed. Seriously. Fortunately, he is eventually released and Olivia figures out what happened, and... feels sorry for him.
Then there's a professional fool named Feste who just sort of wanders around and comments on the insanity around him. He occasionally helps out or sings a song too.
So, in most productions of Twelfth Night I've seen, I have much preferred the A-plot to the B-plot. And actually, that's generally true of Shakespeare. Even in the production I saw on Broadway where Stephen Fry was Malvolio, and therefore part of the B-plot, I like the A-plot better. When I mentioned this to my class during the Shakespeare program, our professor turned to me, and asked me if I liked fantasy. Which, of course, I do. And what I realized then, is that I like the A-plot because it is sort of fantastical. I mean, it's not elves and dwarves and the One Ring, but it's similarly elevated and beautiful and separate. And I love that escapist fantasy that Shakespeare writes into his A-plots of beautiful princesses and counts and true love, all in blank verse. It's lovely, and I find natural fools (Shakespeare wrote two kinds of characters we call fools: professional fools, who are employed to make jokes and provide social commentary, and natural fools, who are just sort of idiots and the butt of everyone's jokes. Shakespeare invites you to laugh WITH professional food, and AT natural fools) kind of dull and gross. I don't much care for them.
So it came as quite a shock to me that I thought the strength of this production lay in its B-plot. Like, everyone in the A-plot did a great job, and it was wonderful and lovely, but the B-plot was probably the best I've ever seen it done. Which is good, because in Twelfth Night the B-plot takes up as much or more time than the A-plot. And the biggest strength of the B-plot was the actor playing Sir Toby Belch. This guy was amazing. He had a great Tim Curry vibe going on. In fact, due to my lack of program, I spend much of the first act wondering if he WAS Tim Curry. But he wasn't. But he did a PHENOMENAL job. Because Toby Belch is not a particularly classy character, but he's clever in his own way. He manipulates those around him, even as we are laughing at him. And the actor played that line between fool and villain with remarkable talent. There was one scene in particular where Toby is drunk, and holding a beer and standing on a table making some humorous statement, and we're all laughing at him, and then someone says something, and nothing in his posture changes, but you look at his face, and all of a sudden he was this incredibly malevolent force. It was chilling. And I thought that was a really great way to do it, because Toby Belch is an INCREDIBLY malevolent character. I mean, he tortures Malvolio because he ruins his parties. And he basically robs Andrew.
It's really interesting to me, because fools, especially natural fools can seem like such... harmless characters, and they often are. I mean, Sir Andrew is pretty incompetent, and Toby shares some of the characteristics of a natural fool, but it's an act. And he uses that appearance of foolishness as a way to gain power over others. Professional fools use their license to mock and make jokes to exert power and influence over others, and Toby does the same, but in an astonishingly dark way. It was a side of the character, and a side of the play I had never truly considered before.
And in some ways, despite the fun trappings of this show: the rock music, the gold lamé curtains, the silly costumes, this show was darker than many productions I have seen. In DC we commented that (oh, background, Shakespeare writes his plays in a 5 act structure with act 1 as exposition, acts 2 and 3 as rising action, act 4 as climax, and act 5 resolution) in Twelfth Night, if there was an Act 6, the play wold become a tragedy, and I saw that so much in this production.
The most obvious way that Act 6 would be a tragedy is Malvolio. After being freed from his cell, and the whole misunderstanding cleared up, Olvia promises him that he will be able to punish those who did him harm as he sees fit. His response, and in this version it was made dead seriously and as he was exiting the theatre is, "I will be revenged on the whole pack of you." And that could go badly for everyone. Not just Sir Toby and Mariah.
Then, you have the A-plot, which ends in marriages, so that should work out, except if you think about it, and this version did, these marriages are probably not going to last. Well, they have to last, because there was no divorce, but they aren't going to be happy. Nobody (except perhaps Viola) actually knows the person they are marrying They fell in love with someone else. And Orsino, who has had time to build a relationship with Viola, literally started the scene wanting to marry Olvia and ended it engaged to Viola. That's not the kind of guy who is going to be consistent in his love for you. Also, he spent the entire play basically being a whiny baby over Olivia. Man does not know how to take "no" for an answer.
And then in this play, the fact that Olivia married a guy she had never met before is made even worse, by the fact that Sebastian is a total jerk. Now, Sebastian is rarely portrayed as the nicest guy ever, but this production took it up a notch. So, Shakespeare is famous for writing some pretty homoerotic characters and relationships. but one of the most famous is Antonio, who is a sailor that rescues Sebastian from the shipwreck. This guy meets Sebastian, saves him, pays for everything, then follows Sebastian to Orsino's town, which means risking imprisonment and death, and even gives Sebastian all his money once he's there. A lot of people have taken this to mean that Antonio is in love with Sebastian. This production included. Except in this production, they made it very clear that Sebastian was aware of Antinio's feelings, and at some point had reciprocated. I mean, for the first half of Sebastian's scenes, he and Antonio are pretty clearly together, even if it is also clear that Antonio feels more for Sebastian than Sebastian feels for him.
So at the end of the play, Sebastian dumps Antonio without so much as a word, and runs off and marries Olivia, even while Antonio has risked his life to keep Sebastian safe. Seriously, Sebastian was NOT a nice guy in this production. And now Olivia is stuck with him, all because she fell for his (much less of a jerk) sister. AND the big scary sailor, Antonio has just gotten completely and unceremoniously dumped by the guy whose life he saved MULTIPLE TIMES for a random rich girl.
Act 6 would not be pretty.
However, one of the best things about the play was that all the actors were having a REALLY good time. Like, sometimes you just look at them, and you can tell, that they are just up there having the time of their lives. Like, Orsino, who comes on in tight gold pants with a... I'm not sure what instrument it was. Like, a small guitar? Not a ukelele though, I don't think. so he comes on in his tight gold pants and with this instrument, and just totally rocks out and over dramatically pines for Olivia, and like, puts on a giant cape to make it even more dramatic. And then there's the scene where Toby and Andrew are dancing around waving their jackets over their heads, or Malvolio strutting his stuff in a neon yellow bodysuit. That's one of the great things about Shakespeare's comedies, is that while they have their darker moments, you can still let go and have a great time, and be silly. And that's what I wanted.
For me, there's also a measure of comfort to going to see a Shakespeare. Because, even if they change EVERYTHING (and they often do) there is always something familiar. The words don't ever change too much. And I can always sit there and wait. For Orsino to dramatically declare "if music be the food of love play on" or Olivia to exclaim "Oh most wonderful!" when both the twins are onstage together, or for Malvolio to vow his revenge on "the whole pack of you" I know it's coming, and I love seeing how each different production portrays these famous lines, and I like knowing that no matter what else happens, the show will hit those beats. Amongst all the new, there is consistency, and it's almost a ritual, the recitation of these words over and over again in so many different inflections. And in a world, and at a time in my life right now, where everything is changing, that ritual is a nice thing to hold on to.
And there were other things that were fun to note. Like, the twins managed to look shockingly alike (that's always a hard part of Twelfth Night, you have to try to cast a man and a woman who look enough alike that you could get them confused. It rarely works.) I mean, they weren't perfect, but they did a really good job with what they were working with. And then there's the fact that the fourth wall was kind of... transparent at times. Like, Viola's first line, "what country, friend, is this?" was not addressed to her "friend" but rather to the "friends" in the audience. And there were entrances and exits out of the house, and other lines that were tossed our way with a nod and a wink, but it didn't ever quite shatter the fourth wall completely.
Anyway, the play was wonderful. And I had a fantastic time. It was exactly what I needed to see, and I'm so glad I got to spend 3 and a half hours surrounded by that beautiful insanity.
After the play, I walked 5 minutes back to my hostel and went to bed.
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