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Tag: drama

Review: Copenhagen, Michael Frayn

Published 21 Feb 2012 by Gin Jenny

Ah plays. I bought Copenhagen in 2009 at the glorious glorious book sale in my hometown (oh my God that book sale, I dream about it sometimes) because it was fifty cents or something and I like plays, and then I chronically didn’t read it for a year and a half, and then I moved to New York and left it behind because I didn’t love it because I hadn’t read it, and then in January when I was at the library getting plays I was all, Dammit, I need to read this damn play. So I checked it out…

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Translations, Brian Friel

Published 6 May 2011 by Gin Jenny

I have now read two of Brian Friel’s plays (this one on the recommendation of my theater-savvy coworker) and I have determined that I am strongly in favor of him. Ordinarily I do not seek out the Lit’rature of Ireland, ancestral home though it is.1 Because the Lit’rature of Ireland seems terribly depressing, and even when it is Breakfast on Pluto and produced both that darling little film with Cillian Murphy and the excellent line about “his disagreeing face, disagreeing because it is as if he is saying ‘you can say this is happening but I don’t agree with you’”…

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Review: Arcadia, Tom Stoppard

Published 11 Mar 2010 by Gin Jenny

There is a particular sort of novel of which I always profess to be passionately fond: the sort with one plotline in the olden days with people doing their olden-day thing, and one in the present with eager scholars researching the very olden-day events in the other plotline.  (Is there a word for this sort of book?  Can there be one?)  If you have ever reviewed a book like this on your blog, I have probably commented to say something like, “Love this sort of book!  Adore!  Worship!  Cannot imagine my life without!” and added it to my reading list…

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Stomping around my bedroom late at night

Published 9 Mar 2010 by Gin Jenny

I do not appreciate the suggestion that Oscar Wilde’s cleverness consisted in paradoxical epigram.  I will accept gracious tributes to Wilde’s way with epigrams, like Dorothy Parker’s: If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit. We all assume that Oscar said it. Thank you, Dorothy Parker.  You have lovely qualities and could bang out epigrams with the best of them. I will not, however, sit idly by in the face of any slighting reference to Oscar Wilde that implies that he was not as witty and charming as he is…

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Review: Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Published 8 Jan 2010 by Gin Jenny

They cut my head off in Titus Andronicus.  When I write plays, they’ll be like Titus…I liked it when they cut heads off, and the daughter mutilated with knives.  Plenty of blood.  That’s the only writing. –John Webster character in Shakespeare in Love Oh, Tom Stoppard.  You are so great.  I wish you would write screenplays for thousands of movies.  I wish you would have your own television show, and it would be called Tom Stoppard Is Not Ha-Ha-Funny But Everybody Loves Him Anyway, and on it, you could make wry comments about hermits who read newspapers and John Webster…

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Review: The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare

Published 21 Nov 2009 by Gin Jenny

Here’s what you should understand before reading Comedy of Errors.  My boy Shakespeare, he’s funny.  He’s all about being funny; he’s got funny down pat.  If you don’t believe me, I can only assume that it’s because you have never seen one of Shakespeare’s plays performed by actors with any hint of comedic timing.  He can do it in many different ways – he can do slapsticky visual gags, he can do puns, he can do wry little digs and situational irony and gallows humor. And when he’s not being funny, he’s still being clever.  Nearly always!  He makes his…

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Review: Richard III, William Shakespeare

Published 19 Nov 2009 by Gin Jenny

I looked up Richard III, and Wikipedia says that scholars consider it one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.  Well, you know what, Wikipedia?  Scholars apparently did not read The Daughter of Time at a young and impressionable age and acquire an emotional stake in the innocence of Richard III!  I have a framed portrait of Richard III in my house, and one of these days I am going to borrow a drill to do a guide-hole, and hang the damn thing up.  In my last apartment it hung right next to my bookshelf. Let me just say, Parliament had already passed…

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Review: Henry VI, Part 3, William Shakespeare

Published 17 Nov 2009 by Gin Jenny

Okay, I did actually forget all about my project to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, but DO NOT WORRY.  I have remembered it now and I shall carry right on with it.  I just finished reading Henry VI, Part 3, which is nice because I’m all done with Henry VI and can move along to my boy Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Remember how I said Part 2 was more like it than Part 1?  Not exactly like it, but more?  I regret to report that I can’t say the same thing of Part 3.  It’s all, Okay, now Edward is…

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The Lady’s Not for Burning, Christopher Fry

Published 7 Aug 2009 by Gin Jenny

I have wanted to read this play ever since I saw the title.  This review brought to you by Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, where I first read about this play with its very excellent title, and  by the Foyle’s on Charing Cross Road, to which very many props for their mad selection of drama. The Lady’s Not for Burning is a modern (1948) play set in the fifteenth century, and it is brilliant with its words but limited in its action, which all takes place in one room in the house of the city mayor.  Thomas Mendip, a disillusioned ex-soldier,…

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Lovin’ on Tom Stoppard

Published 9 May 2009 by Gin Jenny

Speaking of The Mousetrap, here is a Tom Stoppard anecdote.  If you have never seen The Mousetrap and you don’t know whodunit and you don’t want to, don’t carry on reading this paragraph. You have been warned.  Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Inspector Hound is a parody of The Mousetrap and those country house type mysteries, and it’s also a parody of theatre critics.  And it steals lots of plot elements from The Mousetrap, as the title The Real Inspector Hound suggests, which might have caused the Mousetrap people to object.  But!  But but but!  They couldn’t!  Because if they…

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