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Reviewed by:
  • A Tale Told by an Idiot, and: Hamlet Shut Up, and: Katie the Curst, and: A Wither's Tale
  • Kevin J. Wetmore Jr.
A Tale Told by an Idiot Adapted from Macbeth by Robert Richmond and Louis Butelli. Presented by Psittacus Productions at the Son of Semele Ensemble's Lounge Theatre, Los Angeles, California. June 18–July 25, 2010. Directed by Robert Richmond. Lighting Design by Dan Weingarten. Original music by Graham Galatro. With Casey Brown (Malcolm), Louis Butelli (Guy Fawkes), Lisa Carter (Lady Macbeth), Daryl Crittenden (Macbeth), Darin Dahms (Duncan, Macduff), and others.
Hamlet Shut Up Adapted from Hamlet by Jonas Oppenheim. Presented by The Sacred Fools Theatre Company at the Sacred Fools Theatre, Los Angeles, California. July 7–August 8, 2010. Directed by Jonas Oppenheim. Set and Lights by Heatherlynn Gonzalez. Costumes by Wesley Crain. Sound and original music by Josh Senick. Fight Choreography by Laura Napoli. With Derek Mehn (Hamlet), Stephen Simon (Claudius, Yorick, Big Ghost), Kimberly Atkinson (Gertrude), Tegan Ashton Cohan (Ophelia), Jay Bogdanowitsch (Polonius), and others.
Katie the Curst Adapted from Taming of the Shrew. Presented by The Actors Gang at Media Park. Los Angeles, California. August 6–29, 2010. Directed by Lisa Wolpe. Costumes by Allison Leach. With Donna Jo Thorndale (Kate), Molly O'Neill [End Page 256] (Bianca), Jean-Louis Darville (Petruchio), Pedro Shanahan (Hortensio), Nick Huff (Lucentio), R.J. Jones (Grumio), Adam Jefferis (Tranio), and others.
A Wither's Tale Adapted from A Winter's Tale. Presented by the Troubadour Theater Company at the Falcon Theatre. Burbank, California. August 11–September 26, 2010. Directed by Matt Walker. Sets by Mike Jespersen. Lights by Jeremy Pivnick. Costumes by Sharon McGunigle. Sounds by Robert Arturo Ramirez. Musical Direction by Eric Heinly. Choreography by Ameenah Kaplan. With Matt Merchant (Polixenes), Matt Walker (Leontes), Erin Matthews (Emilia), Monica Schneider (Hermione), Katherine Malak (Perdita), Lisa Valenzuela (Mamillus), Beth Kennedy (Paulina, Shepherd), Travis Clark (Antigonus), and others.

In a city famous for the credit "by William Shakespeare with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor," it is not unusual that adaptations of Shakespeare sometimes outnumber productions of the originals. In a four month period in 2010, the city of angels saw Macbeezy, a hip-hop Macbeth at the Knightbridge Theatre; Venice, a post-apocalyptic hip-hop adaptation of Othello at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; Titus Redux, Circus Theatricals/Not Man Apart's production at the same venue, which reimagined Andronicus as a general returning from the Middle East today; Hamlet, Prince of Puddles, a "family-friendly" adaptation featuring the Prince of Denmark as a geeky teenager who cries and wets his pants a good deal; and the four productions reviewed here.

What all four of the productions reviewed here have in common is a set of techniques for making the plays "accessible"—that bugbear of modern production. All four productions relied upon the idea of mashups and pop culture references; this was Shakespeare filtered through MTV, YouTube, and Netflix. Topical and local references abounded in all four productions, firmly anchoring the plays in Southern California, if not Los Angeles itself. One final common element is that all of the performances, despite a clear guiding hand at the helm of each, were company-generated, rather than productions in which a directorial vision guided the company.

The first of these adaptations, A Tale Told by an Idiot, began in the basement of parliament, as Guy Fawkes planted explosives as part of the Gunpowder Plot. He was then haunted by the text and characters of Macbeth. Macbeth's lines in Fawkes's mouth began the show: "If 'twere [End Page 257] done, when 'tis done, 'twere well 'twere done quickly." What followed was a deconstructed, distilled version of Macbeth, with a scrim interposed between the audience and the stage, and lit only by lights held by the actors. The play became much more shadowy and hazy, and figures emerged out of the dark, transforming Macbeth into something of a Halloween haunted house.

The director's note in the program indicated two sources of inspiration for the production: suicide bombers and comic books, especially V for Vendetta, which has its own riffs on Fawkes and Macbeth. Robert Richmond wrote that the production...

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