The Divine Miss Macbeth

The other day we learned that Cyndi Lauper is really into Shakespeare. Today in another one of Reddit's famous AMA's, Bette Midler went ahead and dropped some Shakespeare into the conversation without needing an invitation:

Lady Midler as Lady Macbeth?

I don't know, what do people think? I'm trying to think of her most memorable roles, and I keep coming up with comedy. Could she handle one of the great tragedies? Or do we see her more in a comic role? What I don't see her in is any sort of supporting role. Whatever she does, it seems that she's got to be front and center.

Stop Teasing Me, Middle School

My daughter, I may have mentioned, is in middle school. At the beginning of the school year my wife copied down all the relevant events from the school calendar to our personal calendar. I noticed that next weekend it says, "Fall play : Shakespeare."

What's this now?

I hit the school web site for details.  I've mentioned in the past that my town has an excellent Shakespeare program at the high school, and is part of an invitation-only festival in Lennox, Mass every year.  So if they say they're doing Shakespeare I'm not going to miss it. But alas, this is the middle school not the high school and all the calendar still says is, "Fall Play : Shakespeare".

I tackle my daughter the next morning.  "Ummm, hello?  Fall play Shakespeare? Why do I not know about this?"

"I told you about it," she says.  Liar!

"Pretty sure you didn't," I say.

"Romeo and Juliet? Remember?"

Then I remember. Back at the beginning of the year she told me that the eighth graders are doing something called "Romeo and Juliet Together and Alive At Last".

"Ohhhhh!" I say, "That's annoying. That's not Shakespeare."

So as not to miss out on any Shakespeare, however, I go googling for it. Turns out that Bardfilm beat me to it, and reviewed the story (the novel version, at least) on his blog.

I did get to read some of the script, and I agree with his assessment - the characters are eighth graders dealing with eighth grade issues, but they talk like second graders. I don't plan on going to see the play. I hope that this is not "Shakespeare prep" for the kids before they get to high school.

Dancing With The Shakespeare

I'm not sure how many of you watch ABC's Dancing With the Stars, either because you're in another country and have no idea what it is or because you just got sick of them playing fast and loose with the word "star" about 10 seasons ago.

But!  This week was "Dynamic Duo" week, and somebody (Val and Janel) did Romeo and Juliet. I always pay closer attention when there's a chance that somebody's gotten some Shakespeare into other random stuff.

Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of Shakespeare to be found, once you get past the name. Check it out (they did get a perfect score for the performance):

On second thought, let's look a little closer.

I'm not quite sure what they were going for here, but when I first saw it I thought, "Are they in her bedroom looking out the window?"  As in, "It was the nightingale, and not the lark?"

But here's what sealed it for me. I can only hope that he was going for what I think he was going for:

Romeo's reaction to discovering Juliet's dead body? I love it.  (By the way, you may notice that he's literally holding her up across his knees. Nice trick!)