I was thinking about Shakespeare a lot last night (thus my other thread) because my nephew’s in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and plus we’ve been watching Slings and Arrows, which by the way is awesome. I’ve been comparing with friends and coworkers which plays we’ve seen actually on stage and realizing that it isn’t as many as I kind of thought in my head, because I kind of think of “plays I’ve read” and “plays I’ve seen a movie of” in the same amorphous “Shakespeare I Have Known” category, you know? So I’ve read all the popular ones, and I’ve seen most of the bigger screen adaptations, but I’ve only hauled off to the theatRE for a few.
I’ve seen The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth. I thought I’d seen Hamlet but can’t think where, so I probably haven’t. (I have, however, been forced to study it no less than four times despite not being a lit major.) I think I might have seen Julius Caesar in high school but I’m not sure. On the other hand, I’ve seen Midsummer I think three times not counting a ballet. Dear theaters: please stop doing that one for a while, I’d like to see something else.
I’d really like to see Richard III, King Lear, and The Tempest, if I had to pick.
The poll includes everything that isn’t downright apocrypha.
I’m just curious as to whether anybody’s going to claim to have seen productions of the historicals that aren’t Richard III and haven’t got Falstaff in them.
The only ones I’ve seen have been comedies (Much Ado About Nothing, Comedy of Errors, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor), mostly because someone thought those would be of more interest to a middle-brow audience of high school students and their parents.
I believe I saw one of the lesser-known histories back in the '70s, but I can’t remember which one! It was probably one of the Henry IVs, so there would have been Falstaff.
Not one. A friend tried to talk me into going with him to the Bell Shakespeare presentation of King Lear last year.
I was happy that I knocked back the offer because after the event he revealed that, he so hated the production, he heckled it while it was on. He wrote to John Bell to explain his disgust but never received a reply.
I used to go to the Utah Shakespearean festival every summer when I was a teenager, and that’s where I’ve seen most of my Shakespeare. I’ve seen Julius Caesar in Stratford-upon-Avon at the RSC with John Nettles as Caesar, and I saw an amazing production of MacBeth in Philadelphia many years ago with just three actors playing all roles.
My favorite Shakespeare production, though, was The Taming of the Shrew at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2003, with Jasper Britton as Petruchio and Alexandra Galbraith as Kate. They kept it set in the 1600s and did nothing to alter the script, but through the staging they highlighted the fact that Petruchio’s father had just passed away and he was in a psychological tailspin from the grief, hence his reckless and crazy behavior with Kate. But through their bizarre courtship, he finds as much healing and acceptance from Kate, as she finds healing and acceptance (after being mistreated by her family for so long) from Petruchio. Without changing a word of the script, they transformed a problematically sexist play into a story of mutual healing, true understanding, and equality. It was fabulous.
I think I’ve seen all the comedies, but some of them sort of blend together in my mind, so I’m not completely sure on that. I’ve also seen most of the good tragedies, but the need for casting by race seems to rule out Othello for a lot of companies, so I’ve never seen that one, and I think King Lear must be intimidating to directors, because I’ve never had opportunity for that one, either. The only history I’ve seen is Henry IV, Part 1, but I misremembered it as being Richard III for the poll (it wasn’t until after I submitted that I remembered a line to Google on).
Most of the plays I’ve seen have been done by the local free Shakespeare company, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks. They do 3 plays a year (two outdoors in the summer, and one in schools in the winter), and mostly pick comedies (plus occasionally one by someone other than Shakespeare). So that’s why comedies dominate my viewings so much.
And the poll really should have included Love’s Labours Won, too, just so we could see if anyone would actually answer it.
I saw a fair handful of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre productions when I was in high school, and once went to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Have seen some great productions; the best was a production of Henry V at Stratford in 2001. Interesting stage design using projected backdrops and excellent non-period costumes.
It’s a little misleading - I was surprised that the number was as low as 17 for me, but for the plays that I have seen, most of them I have seen more than once. I think for Midsummer Night’s Dream, I must be up to 8 or 9 productions, not counting the opera. (I didn’t count operas - didn’t think that was what you were after.)
It would be quicker to say which ones I haven’t seen: Two Noble Kinsmen, 2 Henry IV (though I have seen a filmed version of a stage production), King John, Timon of Athens, and Troilus and Cressida.
That said, there are a few more that I’ve only seen in crappy student productions, and I’d really like to see done well: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Pericles, and (surprisingly) Macbeth. Not sure I’ve ever seen a really good Richard II either, now that I think of it.
Our University used to do Shakespeare in the Summer, and they did most of the comedies. I didn’t mark the ones I wasn’t sure of; I’ve seen productions on film and get confused. My first stage play was The Tempest and it was a really amazing production. I didn’t mark the histories, although we read many of them in my high school Shakespearean Theatre class.
Several, most of which I saw performed by a local theater that includes at least one Shakespeare play in each season. The first few seasons I saw there were excellent, but the theater changed hands/management a few seasons ago and the quality of the productions deteriorated considerably. My wife and I put up with it for a while, but decided not to renew our tickets for last season.
Fortunately, I live an area that has a load of top-flight theaters, so I’m able to catch high-quality productions here and there pretty regularly.
I’ve seen As You Like It (college production), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (at the Globe in London), The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night (twice, including once at the Globe in London), The Tempest (college production), King Lear, and Macbeth. I accidentally clicked *Hamlet * (only seen movie versions) instead of Macbeth though, so the poll results are off on those.
I’ve also seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead twice.
One of them’s me - the season I worked in Stratford, the Shakespeare productions were Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anthony and Cleopatra and King John. The King John was a stunning production of a not particularly brilliant play. I saw it at least 6 times…
