[Passions Take Many Forms] Musical Shakespeare

Yesterday, I read in the Detroit Free Press about the Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, ON, about a four-hour drive from where I live. It sounds like it may have started as a simple Shakespeare festival, but then expanded to incorporate plenty of other material from other genres. This year, the festival is doing 14 shows on 4 different stages. They have everything from Marlow's Edward II to Hello Dolly. They're doing classic plays, such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Orpheus Descending, as well as modern musicals, such as Hello Dolly and Into the Woods. Of course, they have the standard Shakespeare fare with The Tempest and Measure for Measure, but the show that caught my eye was a musical version of As You Like It.

Their production reminds me a lot of a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that I did my junior year at ACU. Like Midsummer, they are using the original text that Shakespeare wrote for the lyrics to the songs, but they have new music written by the Canadian rock band, The Barenaked Ladies (who knew they were Canadian?). Also like Midsummer, they are setting the show in a decade of turmoil, the 1960s (Midsummer was loosely set in the 1970s). From the Detroit Free Press article about the show:

"This play, like 'Romeo and Juliet,' is really about the young people getting it right. The young people have more practical sense than their parents," [director Antoni] Cimolino says. They flee (or are banished from) the corrupt court of a false duke and take refuge in the Forest of Arden. These characters, Cimolino says, ask the question: Why isn't there love instead of hatred? "When I thought about it, there's no period that more clearly shows the power of love and of youth and youthful rebellion than the late '60s."

I don't know why the thought of setting this show in the 1960s never occurred to me, and to put it to music in sort of a rock opera style makes it even more appealing. If I ever get the chance to direct this show, I might have to think about this particular setting-- very interesting. To hear a couple of clips from the show, click here. Although the cast performs the songs in the show, the clips are of the band. The music doesn't sound like anything special, but it does sound fun. I wonder if they'll license it out for other theatres to do.