osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-29 07:13 am
osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-29 07:13 am
Theater!
At the beginning of the year I decided to make a concerted effort to spend more time with my friends, and as a result we’ve been going to see a lot of shows together. As it turns out, Indianapolis has MANY theatrical venues, and we’ve been systematically working our way through them all.
At Beef and Boards, a dinner theater, we saw Clue, which was a lot of fun! I have no deeper thoughts about it. The roast beef and horseradish was tasty, as were the pretzel rolls.
For some reason no one wanted to see the incest-’n’-eye-gouging in Oedipus with me, so I hit up the Indianapolis Repertory Theater on my own. The theater is gorgeous, so ornate! And the play is An Experience, as ancient Greek plays are wont to be.
I wish I knew more about how ancient Greek plays were staged back then, and are generally staged now, because I have no idea if the production I saw was avant-garde or a throwback to the original staging. (Everything old is new again if you wait long enough.) Except for Oedipus, who is always Oedipus, the other characters were all chorus members, who sometimes spoke as part of the chorus and sometimes as their particular character. This was sometimes confusing, but I also felt that it contributed to the atmosphere of the play - the sense that we were watching something from a very different cultural milieu than our own.
I actually saw Something Rotten in Bloomington, so technically perhaps it doesn’t belong in a post about Indianapolis theater, but I have to mention it because I loved it - maybe my favorite show of all the shows I’ve seen this spring - and I’d never even heard of it before I saw it. My friend asked “Want to see Something Rotten? It’s a musical about Shakespeare” and I said “Sure!”
Specifically, it’s about two brothers who are trying to make it as London playwrights, only it’s so hard when all anyone cares about is that rockstar Shakespeare! Finally the older brother consults a soothsayer, demanding to know the details about Shakespeare’s greatest play, and the with great verve and enthusiasm the soothsayer tells him all about… Omelet! And also musicals, which are going to be an amazing artform in three hundred years or so, so why not jump on the bandwagon early!
(The soothsayer was cross-cast, and having a girl play such a zany part really shows how limited so many female theatrical roles are.)
Just fantastic. So much fun.
The theater in the art museum is the home for the Indianapolis Ballet Company, and we saw two ballets there. The Sleeping Beauty is a classic Tchaikovsky ballet, with two acts of plot and one act of divertissements, like the second act of the Nutcracker which is just a bunch of dances to entertain Clara. Embarrassed to admit I found this boring.
However, I really liked the other ballet, George Ballanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream! It’s a ballet retelling of the Shakespeare play, and of course it helps that I know the original play, but I thought the ballet did a fantastic job translating all the action of the play into gesture - and it’s paced for an impatient twentieth-century audience.
Pace Wikipedia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream the ballet usually has a second act of divertissements to celebrate the various weddings, but instead the Indianapolis Ballet Company finished up with a pas de deux and an extremely athletic rendition of “Bolero,” which I suspect was better adjusted to the attention span of the twenty-first century audience.
Classic Murder was a trio of one-act murder mystery plays, which were fine, but the venue was amazing: each play took place in a different room of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Mansion, a house in the highest 1880s style, and the audience cycled between the rooms. I’d love to go back some time for a tour.
AND FINALLY, speaking of fantastic venues, Christina and I went to the gorgeous Scottish Rite Cathedral to see the Taylor Swift Candlelight Concert, in which a string quartet plays Taylor Swift songs on a stage covered in candles. (Sadly, LED candles. I’m sure real candles would have been a fire hazard, but WHAT an aesthetic.) I often struggle with orchestral music, but because I knew most of the original songs well, I quite enjoyed this concert! For the last couple of songs they invited the audience to sing along, which for the most part the audience did rather modestly, although people really belted it out when we got to the “You belong with me”s.
At Beef and Boards, a dinner theater, we saw Clue, which was a lot of fun! I have no deeper thoughts about it. The roast beef and horseradish was tasty, as were the pretzel rolls.
For some reason no one wanted to see the incest-’n’-eye-gouging in Oedipus with me, so I hit up the Indianapolis Repertory Theater on my own. The theater is gorgeous, so ornate! And the play is An Experience, as ancient Greek plays are wont to be.
I wish I knew more about how ancient Greek plays were staged back then, and are generally staged now, because I have no idea if the production I saw was avant-garde or a throwback to the original staging. (Everything old is new again if you wait long enough.) Except for Oedipus, who is always Oedipus, the other characters were all chorus members, who sometimes spoke as part of the chorus and sometimes as their particular character. This was sometimes confusing, but I also felt that it contributed to the atmosphere of the play - the sense that we were watching something from a very different cultural milieu than our own.
I actually saw Something Rotten in Bloomington, so technically perhaps it doesn’t belong in a post about Indianapolis theater, but I have to mention it because I loved it - maybe my favorite show of all the shows I’ve seen this spring - and I’d never even heard of it before I saw it. My friend asked “Want to see Something Rotten? It’s a musical about Shakespeare” and I said “Sure!”
Specifically, it’s about two brothers who are trying to make it as London playwrights, only it’s so hard when all anyone cares about is that rockstar Shakespeare! Finally the older brother consults a soothsayer, demanding to know the details about Shakespeare’s greatest play, and the with great verve and enthusiasm the soothsayer tells him all about… Omelet! And also musicals, which are going to be an amazing artform in three hundred years or so, so why not jump on the bandwagon early!
(The soothsayer was cross-cast, and having a girl play such a zany part really shows how limited so many female theatrical roles are.)
Just fantastic. So much fun.
The theater in the art museum is the home for the Indianapolis Ballet Company, and we saw two ballets there. The Sleeping Beauty is a classic Tchaikovsky ballet, with two acts of plot and one act of divertissements, like the second act of the Nutcracker which is just a bunch of dances to entertain Clara. Embarrassed to admit I found this boring.
However, I really liked the other ballet, George Ballanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream! It’s a ballet retelling of the Shakespeare play, and of course it helps that I know the original play, but I thought the ballet did a fantastic job translating all the action of the play into gesture - and it’s paced for an impatient twentieth-century audience.
Pace Wikipedia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream the ballet usually has a second act of divertissements to celebrate the various weddings, but instead the Indianapolis Ballet Company finished up with a pas de deux and an extremely athletic rendition of “Bolero,” which I suspect was better adjusted to the attention span of the twenty-first century audience.
Classic Murder was a trio of one-act murder mystery plays, which were fine, but the venue was amazing: each play took place in a different room of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Mansion, a house in the highest 1880s style, and the audience cycled between the rooms. I’d love to go back some time for a tour.
AND FINALLY, speaking of fantastic venues, Christina and I went to the gorgeous Scottish Rite Cathedral to see the Taylor Swift Candlelight Concert, in which a string quartet plays Taylor Swift songs on a stage covered in candles. (Sadly, LED candles. I’m sure real candles would have been a fire hazard, but WHAT an aesthetic.) I often struggle with orchestral music, but because I knew most of the original songs well, I quite enjoyed this concert! For the last couple of songs they invited the audience to sing along, which for the most part the audience did rather modestly, although people really belted it out when we got to the “You belong with me”s.
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I haven't seen a classic Greek play for a while but the ones I saw had the main actors distinct from the chorus. But I can see the appeal of having that chorus step in and out of the roles.
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Oh, what a cool idea!
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I've never experienced an orchestral/string quartet version of Taylor Swift, but have attended a few concerts where orchestral versions of video game music was played, and greatly enjoyed those. I feel like orchestral/string quartet covers of pop songs used to be a bigger thing in the aughts? Or maybe I was just paying more attention then?
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This really makes me want to see Something Rotten. It sounds great.
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I saw Sleeping Beauty about 10 years ago (I think they had a deal on tickets for grad students?) It may be the only ballet I've seen live (though I watched the Nutcracker on TV as a kid) -- and did give me the impression "wow, ballet is boring" -- so I'm glad to hear it's not just me!
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