Subject: I laughed!
Author:
Posted on: 2023-06-21 23:22:58 UTC
The two conflicting reviews of DND are hilarious. Of course one of them would take issue with the liberal lore-bending in service of Shakespeare ;)
Still making my way through the script but goodness you've outdone yourself hS. So much applause.
Happy solstice! Apparently Midsummer's Day is actually a totally separate event to summer solstice, taking place on the 24th June, but stuff that, we're doing midsummer today.
~
The PPC's resident Shakespeare theatre, A Troupe By Any Other Name, have a long history of setting Shakespeare's plays in canon worlds. In theory, this does nothing more than informing the costuming and the production nickname (see, for example, Julius Caesar of Gallifrey/Rassilon Caesar); the words remain pure Shakespeare.
In practice, particularly at their dress rehearsals, they do a lot of mucking about.
The Troupe has a cozy relationship with the New Multiverse Monitor, the vaguely-classy news magazine which has been running for about a decade now. Almost all of their plays are first reported in the NMM.
Almost. Until they made the mistake of casting Agent Estelnar Celebduin, of the REAL Real Multiverse Monitor, in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Nobody knows for sure who leaked the HD video recording of the dress rehearsal - by which we mean, nobody can prove that it was Estelnar, despite the fact that it's hosted on the RRMM's servers and they were the first people to write about it. The point is, the situation has enough uncertainty to let them get away with it, and that's what matters. Regardless of who is responsible, the RMM have taken full advantage: they have penned an entire issue centred on the distinctly unfaithful adaptation of Shakespeare referred to as A Doriathrin Night's Dream:
We've got it all. Articles! Adverts! Horoscopes! Unsubstantiated rumours! Page Three! A rather naff cover! Truly, you could want nothing more out of your local tabloid than this. The REAL Real Multiverse, available now wherever we can set up a stall without the Flowers noticing.
~
The Monitor issue is written to be a standalone piece, but... back in 2014, I wrote some excerpts of Rassilon Caesar and had fun doing it. I know MND a lot better than any other play, so I decided to take my "excerpts from the dress rehearsal" concept and run with it. Again, it is not required reading for the tabloid issue, but if you happen to want to read an entire Shakespeare play transposed into Middle-earth by an irreverent gang of PPC agents:
A Doriathrin Night's Dream: The Script
Starring a bunch of Middle-earth natives and their buddies, and a distinct lack of reverence for either the immortal words of Shakespeare or the immortal elves of the First Age of Middle-earth. I'm not saying you will find Luthien Tinuviel at the centre of a love quadrangle magically induced by her father in the course of making her mother fall in love with Turin Turambar - but I'm not not saying that, either.
(This is the document linked several times as the "transcript" in the Monitor. Given that it runs to 22,500 words, I figured it was worth calling out separately.)
hS
Ooooooh man. hS, this is amazing, and absolutely the best way I could have spent an off day! I thank you very kindly for that well-organized list of Dramatis Personae, as keeping that section open in a separate tab made it a lot easier to keep track of what PPC character was playing what stage role. (Though I did temporarily mix up Hild and Huinesoron. Darn M-names!) Making the PPC couples play couples within the play helped out immensely, too! I also love all the gratuitous gender-bending among the roles. (Okay, total tangent, but during the shutdown in 2020, the Globe Theater had uploaded a full recording of Hamlet to YouTube, which had seen genderblind casting. And the lady who played Hamlet was just so good, she has not left my brain since, even though the video was eventually taken down, and in fact, I can’t find any footage of the performance anywhere any more . . . but while it was up, I was pretty much playing it on my phone every time I needed to stop and do animal food bowls, and throughout my weekends. All this to say, genderbent casting good, I love to see it!)
Some other various things I loved:
-the inherent bizarreness of Henry Robinson telling Constance Sims, “Still yourself, boy!”
-the fact that, despite the cast being a who’s who of Arda representation in HQ, Galadriel (most Elven of all Elves) is played by an Earth human
-Ranger getting no page time for ~15 years, only to finally return . . . playing a tree prop . . .
-Tanfin never quite managing to shake off RPing as Sauron, and he and Henry pretty clearly planning out a finale to that “plot point” all along
-Starwind not only being unable to resist stirring up potential tabloid fodder mid-rehearsal, but then going on to write both the pro and con articles about the rehearsal she participated in
-Enter Tree at a run.
And some copy-paste artifacts, I believe:
In the Dramatis Personae section, “Court of Doriath” has some bolding that doesn’t match the other titles.
The lines starting with, “‘Little’ again! nothing but ‘low’ and ‘little’!” are attributed to Nellas, but I think they’re Lúthien’s lines.
“I'd also note, my king, that that your true end”
The lines starting with “Truly, a second breakfast-time” are attributed to . . . Bottom?! How did he get into HQ!?
“What have right have we to gainsay such an act”
Thank you so much for writing this and sharing it with us, hS! It really is something special!
—doctorlit, by paved fountain or by rushy book
The Multiverse Monitor was good, as ever.
(I will admit I skimmed the play so I don't have much to say about it.)
Shakespeare and hS have outdone themselves here, they really have.
-Ls
The two conflicting reviews of DND are hilarious. Of course one of them would take issue with the liberal lore-bending in service of Shakespeare ;)
Still making my way through the script but goodness you've outdone yourself hS. So much applause.
Will the MM staff ever get things right, or stop their fights against windmills? No, and that's why we love them.
What are you, some kind of Troupe apologist/hater [delete as appropriate -E.C.]?! I bet you're in league with the magazine/other tabloid [again, delete as appropriate -E.C.] that stole our name! You probably think Dafydd Illian is [I've gone ahead and deleted this one for you -E.C.]