The Shakespeare Code

As Brothers and Sisters of The Shakespeare Code well know…..

 …..Your Cat Trixie…..

…..DEMOLISHED Shakespeare in Love: the Play……

…..in her now celebrated…..

….feared…..

…..and HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL….

…..review….

A DREADFUL WARNING FROM TRIXIE THE CAT!!!

Sadly, the majority of English reviewers……

(…..we cannot in all honesty describe them as…..

critics….)

……fell for the tosh…..

Bouncing Czech, Tom Stoppard…….

….who collaborated on the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love………

…..which re-told Caryl Brahms’s story from No Bed for Bacon

…… is still revered in some middle-brow circles…..

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, BLESS HER, EVEN AWARDED STOPPARD THE ORDER OF MERIT!!!

(It might look trashy, but it’s highly coveted in Britain!)

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the obsequious hacks went down like nine-pins….

HOWEVER, THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL……

AND IT’S NOT – IN THE WORDS OF ROBERT LOWELL…….

The light from an oncoming train…..

TIM WALKER…

…..A TRULY INDEPENDENT THINKER…

(he refuses to join the Critics’ Circle……..

…….. or take ‘expenses’ from Producers for out-of-town assignments the way members of The Circle do)

…..wrote a brilliant attack on the production in last Sunday’s Sunday Telegraph  (26th July, 2014)…..

……entitled……

Do we really need this production of Shakespeare in Love?

He likens the show to…..

………a group of old bores in a pub laboriously re-enacting an all-too-well-remembered film – scene by scene…..

….and adds….

…..it seems to go on for hours….this show is far too long and far too boring and needs to be cut. And a lot.

Walker describes how the actors seem to have been chosen simply…….

………..because they look a bit like the characters in the film……

…….and describes the Director’s staging of a scene between Will and a Boatman on the Thames as….

frankly pathetic…..

He concludes……

I found myself wondering what on earth the real Shakespeare would have made of it all…..If there were a cabbage to hand, I have a pretty shrewd idea of what the Bard would have done with it.

(To read Tim Walker’s complete review, Click: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10986397/Do-we-really-need-this-production-of-Shakespeare-in-Love.html )

THERE IS ALSO INTELLIGENT LIFE OVER THE WATER IN AMERICA……

BEN BRANTLEY

……THE CELEBRATED, DAZZLINGLY BRIGHT AND OPENLY GAY AMERICAN CRITIC…

…….writing in the New York Times on 23rd July 2014…….

……..observed…..

Many people, it must be said, prefer the idea of Shakespeare’s plays to the reality of them. Whether they admit it or not, such souls feel that Shakespeare is great for seasoning but indigestible as a main course. They’re often the ones you hear promiscuously peppering their conversation with the canon’s best-known lines or speaking of failed politicians as “truly Shakespearean.”

[Shakespeare in Love: the Play] seems to have been created expressly with this audience in mind. It might best be described as Shakespeare-flavored, in the way that some soft drinks are advertised as fruit-flavored. Like many such beverages, this show is moderately fizzy and leaves a slightly synthetic aftertaste…..

The imitation Shakespeare dialogue now sounds more of Hollywood manufacture than it ever did in the movie. The presence of the line-feeding Christopher Marlowe in the balcony scene where a tongue-tied Will courts Viola now feels less like a harbinger of Romeo and Juliet than a steal from Cyrano de Bergerac….

Shakespeare in Love is Shakespeare for Sophomores……

And there is a remarkable stylistic coincidence between Ben Brantley’s review and mine…..

On 3 July 2014 Your Cat wrote…..

[Shakespeare] is writing Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter (big laugh from knowing groundlings….)

On 23rd July 2014 Brantley wrote:

Shakespeare has promised the script for a new play, tentatively titled Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter (more knowing laughs)

IT JUST GOES TO SHOW…..

…..GREAT MINDS DO THINK ALIKE!!!

 ‘Bye now…..

To read Ben Brantley’s complete review, click: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/theater/shakespeare-in-love-the-play-in-london.html?_r=0

If you would like to read Trixie the Cat’s game-changing review of Shakespeare in Love: the Play, please click: HERE.