The Bard: When That I Was & A Little Tiny Boy

Elvis Costello/John Harle: When That I was & A Tiny Little Boy
[purchase (full album on vinyl?)]

Elvis Costello has on more than one occasion worked Shakespeare into his music, in fact, he did a whole album in 1993, named the Juliet Letters, whose concept revolved around sending letters to Juliet (of R& J fame) to the sounds of the Brodsky Quartet.

So it was not much of a surprise to anyone when in 1997 he was featured in John Harles album Terror and Magnificence where Shakespeare is set to John Harles saxophone.

A particular highlight for me When That I Was & A Little Tiny Boy, sung by Costello, is a song taken from Twelfth Night in which the character Feste, the fool of the household of Countess Olivia, reflects on the events that had transpired throughout the play. In this retrospective Feste demostrates the ability to correct foolish acts and times ability to temper things.

While detractors of Costello don’t bother with his solo output, I think he did an incredilble job with both the Juliet Letters, as well as, in Terror and Magnificence.

Perhaps it’s because of the amount of Shapespeare being crammed down my throat for three summers selling tickets to the theatre or maybe it’s because I enjoy musicians being self-indulgent or just maybe it’s because Costello’s delievery is so great but I enjoy the hearing Costello literally play the fool and make me sing lyrics from the Twelfth Night on my way to In-N-Out.

Guest post by Edgar

The Bard: Ophelia

 

Natalie Merchant: Ophelia
[purchase]

Struggling to avoid the all too tempting lure of Romeo, and mindful also of a paucity of appropriate references to Bottom or Puck, I had to cast my mind back to GCSE English literature and school plays for inspiration. Given I only ever played the likes of Friar Francis and Falstaff, I was unlikely to ever find much joy there. But fate threw me a googly, as I watched the remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with his first “victim”, Sibyl Vane, the actress, playing Ophelia at Drury Lane. Of course, I thought, immediately making this a simple toss-up between the unbridled joy of Levon Helm leading the Band through their Ophelia at The Last Waltz or this. Somehow this felt more apposite, with, if no direct and overt mention of Shakespeare as source, received wisdom seeming to be that this song is using Ophelia as a metaphor for the fate and circumstance of womankind? Pretentious? I’ll come to that……

I guess I was an early acolyte of 10,000 Maniacs, their heyday coinciding with the end of a self-imposed immersion I had undertaken in nothing but traditional folk for a number of years. Their version of “Just as the Tide was a Flowing” burst through my prejudices, reawakening me to a brighter and broader palette of musics. I was lucky enough to catch them live on a subsequent tour of the UK, totally in awe of the extraordinary and unusual stylizations of Ms Merchant, coming on like a librarian on heat, full of passive-aggressive intellectual bombast. With the final encore being her solo piano emotional overload of “Verdi Cries”, I knew that something special had this way come. Ultimately her musical needs strayed beyond the conventions of US college rock, necessitating a solo career, and her subject matter exploded through unlikely scenarios and scapes, becoming ever more bleak and desolate.  Pretentiousness, as alluded to above, was seldom more than a foot fall away, but somehow, just somehow, at least for me, she managed to step just shy of it.

If only she could pronounce her “R”s, or is that part of the appeal?

Guest post by Retropath2

The Bard : Under The Greenwood Tree

[Purchase]

In the Spring of 1967 Sir Laurence Olivier met with Donovan who was then at the height of his sunshine superman stardom. Olivier asked Donovan to compose melodies for his modern production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It". In his autobiography Donovan writes that he was delighted to transform these songs:
         
I gave "Greenwood Tree" a light, rocking  musical form and kept the sonnet in the troubadour style.


 The lyrics are all Shakespeare's but they reflect Donovan's interest in nature.

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry note....

Ever the mischief maker, Donovan couldn't pass up a little joke at the end. In the recording that appeared on A Gift From a Flower to a Garden (best known for the hit "Wear Your Love Like Heaven"),  Donovan sings:

Do the Willie the Shake
Do the Willie the Shake
Do the Willie the Shake

The Bard: Summer, Summer

 
Two Gentlemen of Verona: Summer Summer
[purchase]

I am not a musical theater lover, but in my family, I am outnumbered 3-1. Both of my children have musical talent, and performed in musicals in high school. My son’s Luther Billis in South Pacific was hysterical, and my daughter’s Babe Williams in The Pajama Game, was awesome (although I have a soft spot for her Harry the Horse from Guys and Dolls). In addition, my wife has a beautiful voice, and sang on stage when she was in high school.

I have no such talent, but many of my friends at Clarkstown North were involved in our theater program, so I was convinced to join the stage crew. Remarkably, I have even less talent at building sets than I do at singing, but I found a role. My school was old, and did not have a modern “back stage” with counterweights to allow for easy raising and lowering of backdrops. I’m a big guy, so my job was to raise and lower the backdrops. I was also good at carrying things, bracing things, getting pizza and driving people home in my parents’ huge Pontiac Catalina. For this dedicated service to the theater, I got to be part of the production, and, notably, attend the cast parties where we black clad crew members would mostly sit together and complain about the actors.

One of the most fun shows that we did was Two Gentlemen of Verona, a rock musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy. Not only was it different from most of the other shows I was involved in—the music did kind of rock—but it was a pretty risqué show. Note the album cover in the video above. Naked breasts!! And they let us do this show in a high school. I specifically remember that there was one scene with simulated intercourse (which is not what we called it back then). As a parent whose kids did theater, I can pretty much guarantee that stuff wouldn’t fly today.

For a regular high school in suburban New York, I remember that the production was quite good—in fact, a few of the cast members went on to professional careers in show business (and a bunch became lawyers, too). Demonstrating my keen talents as a stage crew member, I got to lower an actor from the sky, a feat that I actually performed again the following year, when we put on Once Upon a Mattress. Which is another thing that I suspect would not happen today, due to insurance issues.

A few years ago, if I decided to write about this production, the odds of any of my fellow crew members, or any of the cast members, reading it would have been small. But now, because of Facebook, I have reconnected with a bunch of them over the last few years. So, I will post the link on my page, and maybe it will spark some nostalgia in others.

The Bard: Romeo Had Juliette

Lou Reed: Romeo Had Juliette
[purchase]

My guess is that there are more songs that reference “Romeo and Juliet” than any other Shakespearian work. So many songs are about love and its various permutations, and “R & J” is, to my mind, the most accessible of Shakespeare’s plays because most of us have experienced first love, and can easily understand the idea of falling in love with someone that they shouldn’t. That is easier to identify with for most of us than, say, being a member of royalty. Or killing a member of royalty. Or being confused with your long lost twin and having to disguise yourself as a member of the opposite sex.

So, there is West Side Story, the Bard’s tale transposed to a turf war between dancing and singing gangs in New York in the 1950’s, or “The Cinema Show,” (discussed above) which sets it in England in, I guess, the 1970’s. And there is the Lou Reed adaptation posted here, set in the gritty New York of the 1980’s. This version is part of Reed’s brilliant New York album, in which he and a group of incredible musicians paint an indelible view of the city during a difficult time, when money was tight, drugs were rampant, and crime was endemic. The music is tight, the lyrics are sharp, the songs are memorable, and if you somehow don’t own this album, you should.

I lived in New York during that time, and although I was mostly spared the bad stuff, you couldn’t ignore it. Of course, New York is also a hotbed of Shakespeare, with productions of his work almost constantly in theaters, most famously the Shakespeare in the Park shows each summer in Central Park, featuring top performers and usually interesting direction.

Now, I live in a community a little north of the city where, remarkably, Shakespeare is an integral part of the fabric of life. Spearheaded by my friend Peter, an incredibly talented director of children and teenagers, he began by offering workshops where kids would learn and perform scenes from Shakespeare plays. I’m proud to say that both of my kids were involved at the start, and what makes Peter’s approach special is that he makes sure that the kids understand and appreciate what they are saying. So that they are really acting, and not just reciting lines. I remember reading Shakespeare in high school, where it was unfortunately treated as something difficult and off-putting, and I regret that I never got the appreciation of his work at a young age like my kids and their friends.

These workshops, due to the vision of our local schools foundation and the YMCA, pushed by my friend Barbara, grew into regular productions of Shakespeare plays in the schools, starting at the elementary level, and in an incredibly popular summer theater camp, culminating in our own Shakespeare in the Park outdoor productions, featuring casts of children and teenagers. Peter and his crew do not dumb down the language, and the kids, as kids usually do, rise to the challenge. He often has fun setting the plays in different times, including my favorite, As You Like It, set in the 1960’s. He commissioned one of my son’s friends to write original music for the show, a band of high school students performed the music, including some period pieces, during the play, and my daughter belted “Somebody to Love,” channeling her inner Grace Slick. (If you are interested in having your mind sort of blown, check out what this still young composer is doing now--Orkinpod). The summer performances are a highlight, and draw big crowds.

Not only that, but a couple of summers ago, two recent high school grads, and alumni of Peter’s troupe, formed their own theater company, generally for adults (although they have worked in a few kids). The first summer they produced A Midsummer’s Night Dream, (which my kids were in) and last summer was The Tempest. Also produced outdoors, these productions were sophisticated and well-acted, even considering the shoestring budget that was available.

I’m proud of my community for supporting such amazing theater and I wanted to give credit where it is due. And if my friends read this, and inflate the blog’s page views, so much the better.

The Bard: The Cinema Show

 

 

Genesis: The Cinema Show

[purchase @ Amazon ]

In case the powers that be conspire to block your access to the mp3 above, try this URL: https://soundcloud.com/kc-the-pier-82/10-cinema-show

Back in their prime, Genesis was one of my favorites. Could have been because of my classical music upbringing: I sang tenor is such things as Handel’s “Messiah”. Could also have been on account of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins’s innate musicality. (J. David has touched on Genesis here before)

Genesis’ 1973  release “Selling England…” reeks of British history (of which “the Bard” is an obvious part). In “The Cinema Show”, from this album, Genesis bring Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into the modern age, singing:
  
   Home from work our Juliet
   Clears her morning meal
And later …
   Romeo locks his basement flat
   And scurries up the stairs

As Gensis prove: so little has changed in 500 years: the plight of Romeo and Juliet is more or less the same: a daily struggle. Indeed: a cinema show for Romeo & Juliet! A chocolate surprise in 1600...

I particularly focus regularly on the line in the song: "there is indeed more earth than sea." We are taught in school that the oceans comprise 2/3 of the surface of the Earth - but we don't learn that that which supports the seas is in fact "earth" - and that it goes miles deep.

While the Genesis versions of "The Cinema Show" are the definitive ones, Soundcloud offers less well-known renditions that may pique your fancy as well. For example:

https://soundcloud.com/clairededirval/dixie-the-cinema-show