Sexy Shakespeare
On a total fluke, Becky and I got to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater for $5 today. This show is amazing. It's preformed by an Indian cast, complete with music and costuming. Every cast member is an acrobat or street performer, so the fairies go swinging about on silks and ropes and it is amazing.

Check out the trailer: http://www.chicagoshakes.com/main.taf?p=2,28

It's not like the other acrobatic play I've seen, this is seriously shakespeare, with all the stunts as gravy. Periodically in Hindi or one of several other languages, though most of the signature lines are in English. It's fun to watch Oberon start out, "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania..." and then lapse into another tongue when he loses his temper. Oberon was fabulous, stole every scene when he was onstage, Puck was great too, with this lecherous grin almost always on his face. The actress playing Helena was stunningly beautiful, which made her speech about not being pretty very amusing.

The stage and set itself was fabulous, everyone was barefoot and the entire main stage was covered in several inches of sand. The first act was kind of intense, Demetrius and Lysander got a little rough with the ladies, so much that at one point an unseen fairy biffed Lysander upside the skull and in another Oberon himself made to leap from his perch and defend Helena from Demetrius. The second act took the relations in a different direction, or as Becky said, "It got a little slutty for a while there."

It was amazing and beautiful and fun, it ended with a musical number, and then after their bows the cast brought the musicians onstage and they danced and sang some more.

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Wow, I got through this whole entry without mentioning the shirtless hot guys? Amazing. Especially Mustardseed, rrrooowlll...