Good morning, all! DR Ben, welcome to my world!
I slept well, after the first terrfying dreams that woke me around 12:30; haunted rooms, ghostly knockings, faulty light bulbs, something terrifying waiting to appear. I was quite relieved to wake up from that one. My brother Macbeth and my mother were in the dream as well. And, no, the terrifying something was not Lady M.
Today, I have a new friend stopping by at one, an acting student from Carnegie Mellon, just graduated, who's written a musical and wants me to orchestrate it. He sent me an email several onths ago telling me he'd been a fan since he was a child and owned the video of the New York State Theatre Institute's A Tale of cinderella - thank God for that full screen credit! - and I like the three numbers from the score that he's sent me as mp3 files.
So, to AS YOU LIKE IT, I first saw it in a dreadful production around 1970 at Miami University Theatre at the same time the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park presented an all-male cast production. Of all the Shakespeare plays in which the heroine disguises herself as a boy, this is my least favorite: who is Celia? why does the playwright sort of toss her out of the plot halfway through and then marry her off at the end to someone she hardly knows? Isn't she really in love with Rosalind? Shouldn't Rosalind be a bit concerned that Orlando seems to prefer flirting with her when she's the boy Ganymede? What is all this nonsense with Jacques, Touchstone and Audrey? I hated this play in 1970 and I've not changed my mind since.
I much prefer TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, CYMBELINE, and the glorious TWELFTH NIGHT when it comes to cross dressing in these comedies.
