Shakespeare in the park

I always liked Shakespeare, I may not always understand the language of his plays but I still think the language sounds beautiful and I also like how the plays are so translatable that they can be adapted to any time period and still be relevant/interesting to modern audiences. Last night I was able to get a group of friends together to go and see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company perform Two Gentlemen of Verona on Boston Common. What I felt was really cool about the performance was that it included references to Boston sports teams and  a live band and band music from the 1940s and 50s. I felt the musical addition was rather clever as I like songs from the 1950s. The band made the performance seem like a cross between Shakespeare and a 1950s musical, which I thought was a lot of fun.

The performance also involved an actual live corgi dog-that animal alone stole the show for me. At one point the dog barked as if on cue at a very appropriate moment and surprised the actors as much as the audience, I suppose the dog hadn't done that before. Spontaneous things like that seem to make such performances more interesting. The only other outdoor Shakespeare performance I've been to was to go and see Hamlet with my family. There's a storm scene in Hamlet and just at that particular scene the skies opened and it started raining. Not torrential rain, (thank goodness) but enough to get my brother to start whispering repeatedly and energetically to my parents that he wished my dad had taken him to see a football match instead. Despite all that, I think my brother, my sister and I still did eventually appreciate the bit of culture our parents tried to instill in us. I think if my parents had not exposed me to plays like that, I might not appreciate them as much and have as nice a time as I did last night!

Although it's really short notice, there's still time to see Shakespeare on the Common. The last performance is Sunday July 28th at 2 and 8 pm. If you go, please give a standing ovation to the corgi!