I had to appreciate Shakespeare's Land of the Dead at MSU's Pasant Theatre, in spite of the fact that it centers around two of my NONfavorite genres: Shakespeare and Zombies. If you like either or both, you will be charmed by this well executed mashup. Zombie-philes can pay extra for seats in the "splash zone" and be delightfully dappled with blood/guts/brains? (Needless to say, we were not seated close enough to "the zone" to do full inventory.)
The language is Shakespearian, and hence not the easiest to understand, but full of references and quotes from Shakespeare (probably more than I recognized.) There was witty debate with Francis Bacon (Caleb Wolfe) about who was writing what script under whose name — as well as the timeless debate over the "crowd-pleaser" theatre (Falstaff/Zombies) versus "serious drama." The Zombie feature was historically linked as some version of the black plague, with zombie-esque symptoms including twitching, plodding, growling, munching…. As the dramaturg's note says, "Many of [Shakespeare's] plays feature supernatural elements like ghosts, witches, apparitions and fairies. Why not zombies?"
The always excellent Andrew Head was an engaging, often exasperated Shakespeare; Ryan Bennett was a cute and "jiggy" William Kemp, lobbying for his crowd-pleasing "Falstaff" character to return; Julia Hays was fetching as the prerequisite girl-playing-boy-playing-girl-playing boy, with her/his perpetual struggle to get out of his/her corset-dress providing an ongoing sight gag.
The "special effects" and elaborate stage combat were impressive. Kudos to director Christina Traister for engineering this unique show. It continues through October 20, with a midnight (11:55) show on Friday. theatre.msu.edu
The language is Shakespearian, and hence not the easiest to understand, but full of references and quotes from Shakespeare (probably more than I recognized.) There was witty debate with Francis Bacon (Caleb Wolfe) about who was writing what script under whose name — as well as the timeless debate over the "crowd-pleaser" theatre (Falstaff/Zombies) versus "serious drama." The Zombie feature was historically linked as some version of the black plague, with zombie-esque symptoms including twitching, plodding, growling, munching…. As the dramaturg's note says, "Many of [Shakespeare's] plays feature supernatural elements like ghosts, witches, apparitions and fairies. Why not zombies?"
The always excellent Andrew Head was an engaging, often exasperated Shakespeare; Ryan Bennett was a cute and "jiggy" William Kemp, lobbying for his crowd-pleasing "Falstaff" character to return; Julia Hays was fetching as the prerequisite girl-playing-boy-playing-girl-playing boy, with her/his perpetual struggle to get out of his/her corset-dress providing an ongoing sight gag.
The "special effects" and elaborate stage combat were impressive. Kudos to director Christina Traister for engineering this unique show. It continues through October 20, with a midnight (11:55) show on Friday. theatre.msu.edu
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