Stephen Fry.  Mark Rylance. 

   As I Like it 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with an all male cast from the Globe Theatre in London (officially opening Nov.10) is terrific.  If you like your Jacobean jesting served with crisp comic timing, vaudevillian swagger and unsentimental intelligence --get thee to the Belasco Theatre and grab a $27 on-stage seat and thank me later.  Come opening night there won't be a ticket to be had for less than a Duchess's dowry cause the critics are gonna wet their Breeches over this one.

And yes, I said on-stage seat.  On both wings of the stage are stacked Globe-like seating pews with bench seats.  We sat in the upper one (about 12 feet up) and it was like sitting on top of the backboard for a Knicks game. Why are they selling for 27 bucks when orchestra seats are $137 you ask?  I have no idea--the benches have cushions and unless you require back support, they're fine. You're literally on top of the action...and within winking distance of the fine musicians playing brilliantly on period instruments.    When Shakespeare is this good, I'm moved to tears--and I think I cried about 5 times during this one.  The Bawdy Bard at his best...

And by my troth, he is bawdy...
A good portion of the play concerns a subplot wherein a mixed bag of drunk, disorderly, and conniving characters play an elaborate practical joke on a stuffy old servant named Malvolio.  They fool him into thinking that the mistress of the house is in love with him by forging a riddle filled letter to him professing her lusty infatuation--and as he reads it and tries to confirm that the letter must be from her--he comments on the handwriting: 

By my life, this is my lady's hand, these be her
very C's, her U's, and her T's, and thus makes she her
great P's. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.

when the line is performed, it sounds phonetically like this:

"These be her very C's, her U's, 'N' her T's. And thus makes she her great P's. 

And he goes on to add after feeling assured that it is in her hand: 

"Alas, later tonight, the hand in use shall be my own."

The cleverness in the spelling out of the obscenity (and though the word did not originally connote what it does today, by Shakespeare's time it was already considered a hard core obscenity)  is funny in itself, but that its coming unwittingly from the mouth of a pompous party pooper--is the real hoot. Shakespeare is having a blast poking his parodic pen at pretentious puritans by having one speak in a manner contrary to his previously professed principles. (and I'm having fun with my alliterative "Ps") 

The entire production never misses an opportunity to savor every drop of wit and wisdom in the text (except for Feste, the fool, who speaks his lines too quickly) --and when the wordplay is as down and dirty and jaw dropping brilliant as it frequently is here, and the frolicsome cast has the rhythm and timing down to the sixteenths notes-- it's like the Marx Brothers meets Mozart at The Henry Miller saloon.

FYI Twelfth Night was a part of the year-end festivities in the British Isles and France. These celebrations originated in the Fifth Century wnen French and English churches created the "Feast of Fools." Temporary Bishops and Archbishops of Fools play-acted, reveled and generally caused mischief. By the Fifteenth Century, such ceremonies were banned from church by the French government due to lewd behavior. A new street festival was created and a temporary "king" for the season known as the Prince des Sots was elected. In England, this king was called the "Lord of Misrule" and, in Scotland, the "Abbot of Unreason." The king's reign began on Halloween and lasted for three months.:

SOURCE: http://www.novareinna.com/festive/twelfth.html

I'm drifting off ...

...and taking a blogging break for a while to see if I can make some headway on a book I started many moons ago and abandoned too many times to count.

A hearty and heartfelt thanks to all my followers and regular readers here-- it's you I always aimed to please.  And thanks to everyone else who stopped by now and then for what I hope was time well spent.

And spasibo to my faithful fans in Russia.  I still don't know what you see in me (unless its your job to keep tabs on American Pink Diaper babies who have long since outgrown their inclinations to follow in their parents' footsteps) but in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I'll assume that you too enjoyed reading what you found here.

And special thanks to my sis Debby, who often let me know when she enjoyed a post and provided much needed inspiration by her support. 

And very special thanks to Ellen for putting up with my surliness whenever she called with real life issues requiring my attention while I was preoccupied with the nursing of my digital digressions.