Two Gents: A Final Banging On About

 IS THIS YOUR DOG? The master-servant dynamic I have with my laptop is, now I think of it, not dissimilar to Lance's with Crab, but then, whose isn't?

 Here is Act Five of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and the playlist of all five acts can be enjoyed/endured here which means, yes, Simon goes Full Shakespeare's maiden production is now a thing that has happened! If I keep this up, all of of Shakespeare will have been done by Christmas and nobody need ever do any again. Sorry for taking down the old Act V, but the one comment that managed to make it in comparing the finale to "gluing the head of a funny dog onto the body of a man" seems about right to me. Is the end rushed, or just bad? It's probably not the last time this question will arise. I think if we're meant to believe Proteus is reformed, we definitely need at least another four acts, but maybe it's meant to be distressing? Shakespeare's work is full of monsters native to a world where women are property and decapitated human heads mark the boundaries of the city, so I didn't want to artificially sweeten the story just to spare the viewer outrage, but also you want some continuity of characterisation, you want to believe what you're showing. It was at 4am the night before recording that I realised, if I played Valentine's immediate forgiveness of Proteus with furious sarcasm rather than with dramatically baffling sincerity, his insistence that Proteus and Julia immediately patch things up and marry would become strategic rather than just conciliatory, and it could be Julia's presence that initiated the men's reconciliation, rather than Valentine's own frankly misplaced do-goodery. In other words interpreting Valentine's lines in bad faith, while dodgy, didn't just let the conclusion be more palatable, it let it be more interesting. The mechanics of a happy ending could serve to illustrate something more tragic, or at least cautionary, for which we wouldn't have to want Julia and Proteus to get together, we'd just have to believe Valentine would want it. Whether any of this is detectable from me shouting across my laptop in pyjamas is of course moot. Either way, it would still have been nice to hear from Sylvia... Rewatching it all I see Valentine predicted Proteus would "prove a fool" for love in the very opening scene, which is one way of putting it. I also notice Sir Eglamour is named as one of Julia's suitors in the next scene, so he's not as chaste as all that.

Sir Eglamour concept art

 To answer a couple of questions: While I was reading the Defoe a day's passage in advance I'm much more familiar with the Shakespeare: I've seen every play at least once - I've watched the entire BBC box set for a start, and there are only two plays of which I haven't seen at least one other version: Pericles, and this one - so I think I'm going to rewatch the Beeb versions again each weekend before recording - it's always good to see some kind of decision made on how a character might be played whether or not you go with it - and I'll also read the play. Other than that I'm treating this a little like a radio recording - get the script not much beforehand, choose the voice (big voices aren't just necessary to distinguish the characters, they're freeing... they're new vehicles to take round - and possibly hopefully off - the course... I mean, you can really charge at these lines), read the script, record the script. The main difference is, as the above would suggest, that I'm also going to have to work out what the hell's actualy going on in, which is the biggest work, but also the biggest reason for doing this maybe. As for how this differs to playing opposite other actors, um, if anything I'm finding it easier, but I'm not going to beat myself up too much about that, collaboration's not about making something easier, it's about making something together. And I miss being able to react, but that's a logistical issue, not a creative one. In secondary school, or whatever the posh version I went to was called, one of our English teachers Peter Holmes would arrange "rehearsed readings" of Shakespeare, which were in fact completely unrehearsed, just meetings after school to sit in a circle with the text, stand and move to the middle when it was your cue, then just play it. Like I say, charge at it. Peter was absolutely convinced that this was doable, and he was right, and I've missed that.