I totally get what you're saying. It's perhaps just a personal quirk of my own - over the course of my life I've fallen in love with a few Ellens - charismatic, bewildered by life, self-absorbed, emotionally volatile - and after the relationship crashed and burned, I've certainly had friends who said, "What were you…

Seconding all the other favorable comments, and I'm also grateful for their discussion of the character of Ellen. I'm an Ellen fan, and wrote during the early reviews that the problem with her is that she's impossible: it's impossible not to fall in love with her, and impossible to live with her. But that's true of…

Todd: This series of reviews has been amazing. It started off thoughtful and well-written, and just became richer with each passing week. Thanks.

Stratford does new Canadian plays most seasons. Monette sometimes gets slammed for Disneyfying the festival, but he usually programmed balanced seasons - lots of classics, lots of crowd-pleasers, and always something challenging and out of the mainstream.

Yep, that's really what I meant. You said it much better than I. And I fully agree with your first paragraph as well.

About Barbara, the friend we love to hate. One minor annoyance for me was her insistence that "my character wouldn't do that". Except, her character DOES do that. Geoffrey really needs to tell her to find a way to make Goneril the type of person who WOULD end up commiting suicide.

It's a commonplace that an actor will often come off stage after his/her final scene (especially when that scene is a "big whoop" - a death scene or a triumph) and be so pumped up they forget there's still more play to finish without them.

sacrelicious: I don't disagree that there can be cost savings, and I also agree that *a portion* of the motivation may be those savings - and that what that portion might constitute will differ based on the company. Just pointing out that, historically, the reason is actually artistic and well justified. It's really…

I believe that was William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

Have to disagree, sacrelicious. The reason for changing the setting to modern (or often intermediate - no costuming savings there) times is to find a way to make the play resonate with a modern audience. Putting Richard III in a fascist England communicates to a modern audience something that might have been obvious…

The "Complete Works" editions sometimes - but not always - provide a solidly edited text, but rarely any decent supporting material. In the histories this is a particularly important issue - sorting out all those family relationships which were common knowledge in Shakespeare's day for instance. Riverside is good,…

I also thought total nudity was the aim from the beginning, but it actually wouldn't be unusual for an actor to wear underpants under a costume piece, even if that costume piece was a form of underwear. At some point you might have to do a quick change out of it.

But an inflatable Shakespeare in the "Scream" pose …. now there's a collectible!

It's a little disturbring that this study is presented as "news". Any biography of Shakespeare has to mention his being cited for grain hoarding simply because it's one of the few verifiable facts we have about Shakespeare. It's not clear from any of the reports I've seen what the basis is for claiming this hoarding…

For those following this sort of thing, the brother-in-law is Ben Carlson, best known for his stage work in Canada. At the time the series was made I think he was in the company at the Shaw Festival (he played John Tanner in Man and Superman, for example) and he moved to the Stratford Festival not too many years ago…

I've been ruminating on the Richard plots problem, and I've come to the conclusion that they are doing the work that the "low" characters perform in the plays of Shakespeare. While the main plot is doing the heavy lfiting on the emotional end, they provide a simple, laugh-out-loud release and counterpoint.

Natty: Probably a matter of "your mileage may vary". Certainly you're in good company in this opinion. It just never bothered me.

She always struck me as the kind of person who would be very hard to have as a friend, but with whom you could easily fall in love.

Shatner apparently did quite a bit of theater, including at the Stratford Festival, and he was fairly well-received, according to reports. He did an LP of Shakespeare after hitting it big. I recall a talk show where he made an excruciating attempt to lip-sync to it. He wasn't able to quite sync up, which made his…

Replying to Natty, actually.