Oh my, that takes me back. We went as a school group to see the Zefirelli at one of the big cinemas in London, where the organ and organist rose from the depths to play the big theme from the Tchaikovsky overture, and duly descended, which we found very diverting.
I remember having as set texts in EngLit Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Winter’s Tale, Antony and Cleopatra. As actual stage productions, I think the school put on the Dream, or part of it. Mostly I remember productions at university: Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Ian McKellen in Richard II, and an outdoor performance of Love’s Labours Lost in a college garden. Otherwise, over the years there have been quite a lot of film and TV productions, but there are still some I haven’t read or seen.
Just a reminder to everyone in this thread that you can watch all 37 plays on Britbox. They have the entire BBC Television Series, which includes my favorite production of Twelfth Night with Felicity Kendal.
When I was a high school junior, my class read Macbeth. Everyone was required to perform a scene or a soliloquy for the class. I did “Is that a dagger I see before me…”
Is that the series that had John Cleese playing Petruchio? I thought that was the best Tamin of the Shrew I’d ever seen, especially with his soliloquoy about how he would help Kate lose her shrewishness. He played it that he saw how she had been mistreated by her family, and he sympathised with her, and hoped to pull her back to what he saw as her true nature.
It’s hard to sympathize with Romeo, who even by tragic hero standards is a doofus.
I read in in Grade 12, by which point I think most of us could see that the heros were stupid. I did “Julius Caesar” in Grade 9 and it remains probably my favorite.
Grade 9 - Julius Caesar and Henry IV, Part I
Grade 10 - The Merchant of Venice
Grade 11 - Othello
Grade 12 - Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Hamlet
The only one I’ve SEEN performed more than once, not counting movies, is Twelfth Night, for some reason.
I may have seen recordings of more, but I’ve only seen the top 2 on the list live. Both were school productions: Midsummer was a middle school production by the middle school drama group, and Romeo and Juliet was a school production that we went on a field trip in junior high or high school to see.
R&J was very accessible primarily because of the way it was delivered, with them basically acting out all the innuendo, which we teens adored.
We did do live read throughs of parts of Hamlet and Macbeth in class, but I don’t count them.
Measure foir Measure would be a good one to introduce Shakespeare to teens. Dirty jokes, sneakin’ around in the dark, bad language, and a happy ending, with the bad guy sort of reformed, but still getting his comeuppance.
We’re so lucky to be within driving time of American Players Theater, where we’re seeing Merry Wives of Windsor next week (before we need bug spray). My Fathers’ Day present.
It’s good to see that one of the numbers in the poll linked in the first post has changed. When I started this thread, 34% of respondents said “I have never seen a live performance of any of these”, but now that number is down to 22%.