David Tennant and Catherine Tate in a modernized Much Ado About Nothing.
Modernized Julius Caesar - Marc Antony’s speech. Try not to get goosebumps.
The Donkey Show - An immersive version of Midsummer Night’s Dream set in a disco. Lots of fun out on the dance floor, I’ve seen in 3 times now.
Sleep No More - An amazing immersive experience following the storyline of MacBeth. One of the most amazing theatrical experiences of my life.
[quote=“Tarataratara, post:21, topic:836711”]
Modernized Julius Caesar - Marc Antony’s speech. Try not to get goosebumps.
[/QUOTE]Whew…
Tried, and failed.
This happens all the time here - Two Gentlemen of Verona done as a Shaw Brothers flick, Macbeth as a post-apocalyptic story all Mad Max-costumed .* Midsummer Night’s Dream* with giant puppet fairies.
The motivations in West Side Story are pretty much the same as those in Romeo and Juliet. Forbidden Planet, definitely not so much.
Here’s one that nobody ever mentions – Disney’s The Lion King has been compared to Hamlet for reasons that are obvious, but people rarely mention that Simba’s friendship with Timon and Pumbaa has a very Prince Hal/Falstaff/Bardolph feel to it (from Henry IV, parts 1 and 2), with Pumbaa definitely being Falstaff.
Sure, in motivations specifically West Side Story is closer to its Shakespearean equivalent. But motivations are not the only thing that makes a story, and in every other regard, I’d argue that Forbidden Planet is closer.
And West Side Story also adds a clear gender divide in the characters’ attitudes that isn’t present in the Bard’s: All of the Puerto Rican women seem to regard Tony as a perfectly appropriate match for Maria, and it’s just the men who are pushing back against him.
Years ago, I saw a Hamlet where the “To be or not to be” speech was played as a comic monologue (without altering the original). It worked beautifully.
It was based on two conceits: Hamlet is only pretending to be mad, and just before the speech, he sees Polonius is watching. So the entire thing is designed to convince Polonius that he is mad, which Hamlet plays to the hilt. It got more laughs than any Shakespeare comedies I’ve seen.
The John Tuturro movie Men of Respect was a Mafia version of Macbeth. I always felt that naming Dennis Farina’s character Bankie Como was a bit of a stretch.
Motivations are a HUGE part of the story. I don’t know of any other supposed Shakespeare adaptation where they changed those as much as in Forbidden Planet.
I saw a version of Hamlet in Charlotte NC in a converted office building. It had the old checker pattern floors, and the seats were relocated from an old movie theater. The setting was made to look post-apocalyptic, with sandbags for bunkers and parachute awning lining the ceiling. It was like these people were survivalists, establishing a pecking order. My friend Tom played Horatio and had kind of a punk hairdo.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were portrayed by two women wearing tight leather. During their scene with Hamlet, they tried to seduce him into telling them his true intentions, but he kept playing them off. Completely different from the usual version where R & G are portrayed as baffled and clueless.
I had seen past version of Hamlet where Claudius’s talk with God was usually done with remorse and guilt, but in this case, Claudius didn’t show any remorse whatsoever. He talked with God like he was making a deal: spare me eternal punishment and I’ll be a better king. I talked to the actor after the play and congratulated him on a job well done, and that I had never considered that Claudius could be portrayed that way. The actor said he thought if Claudius was willing to murder his brother to be king, he wasn’t going to do any looking back. He’d want to stay king.
Hamlet’s duel with Laertes was fought with axes, not foils. They used heavy metal artists in their soundtrack. That just goes to show you how Shakespeare can resonate with any culture and any time period.
I’ve seen several adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (there are lots, beyond Forbidden Planet’s possibilities), but one of the most interesting was the one staged by Teller (of Penn and Teller), who took the idea of Prospero as a Magician very literally.
https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/the-tempest-2014/
I misread you a bit here, and thought you were saying Teller actually played Prospero. Which would be a hell of a thing to see.
The East Hollywood High School (in Utah) version of Macbeth:
I just typed “shakespeare comedies” into google, and got, first up, a row of movies like “She’s the man” (Twelfth Night) and “Were the World Mine” (Midsummer Night Dream). Google obviously thinks the re-interpretations are more interesting than the originals.
Anyway, I was thinking of “My Own Private Idaho”, (Henry V, 1, 2)
The only one I’ve seen live is the Taming of the Shrew, (Kiss me, Kate) played straight with a reversed-gender cast. Shakespeare originally had boys playing the female parts: the gender of the actors doesn’t actually matter. I think that the producers just felt that having a reversed-gender cast gave them licence to produce a play they wouldn’t otherwise have felt comfortable doing.
Terminator 2 done with Shakespeare’s dialog “William Shakespeare’s Terminator the Second”. I thought it worked very well. The video is on YouTube. It used to be for sale at this web site, but it looks like only the soundtrack is available. http://watch.terminatorthesecond.com
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