Ugh… On Wednesday, we went to see another play. This one was Shakespeare – Anthony and Cleopatra – a Charles University production. Big mistake… I cannot emphasize enough how bad the plays are here. I blame Jamie. It was his idea to go. His defense is that he saw “a professional looking poster” in a book shop. I don’t buy it. He should have known better.
Before the play started, we joked that it might be in Czech (but we decided that would be unlikely). We also joked that they might speak with Czech accents. Be careful what you joke about… The first line of the play was incomprehensible. Is this Czech? No… wait… its English… with a (you guessed it) thick Czech accent. Crap… Within minutes, Ruth had literally run out of the theater, unable to suffer through another second of it. People performing Shakespeare with Czech accents suck. It also didn’t help that virtually the entire ensemble could not act – not to save their lives. Horrifying… Many of them seemed to be confused about the meaning of the lines they were speaking – not sure where to put the inflection, and clueless about how they should feel about them. Which word should I emphasize? I’ll go with “the”. That sounds about right. How does my character feel about this line? How about happy? Sure. When should I smile? I guess now’s as good a time as any…
And the hairdos – oh, the hairdos… Were mullets popular in Roman times? And the blocking – oh, the blocking… It never looks good when the actors bump into one another. Why did you decide to stand there? You have no lines. Get out of the way. It’s bad enough that everyone is struggling desperately to remember what they’re supposed to say next. We don’t need you distracting them by idling in the middle of the scene.
We bolted at the act break – ran from the theater and didn’t look back.
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