QUOTE:
Reverence for the play doesn't seem such a bad thing

Really? It sounds like an awful thing to me.

I saw a version of Macbeth once, with matey boy out of Allo Allo - Gordon Kaye, is that him? the one who got a plank in his head one time - at the Dome in Brighton, where Banquo was played by a panda. Not a real one, obviously, that would be ridiculous. A teddy bear type panda.

Loved it. It was very funny, and at the same time made me more interested in seeing a straight version again as well.

It sounds like a shite idea to do this particular thing with this particular play and I won't go and see it, but in general people should be free to fuck around with all manner of literary works. Only lunatics object to music DJs sampling classic songs after all. Consider it a kind of 'theatrical mash-up'.

I can't see the problem with this. Not my cup of tea at all, but why anyone should have a problem with their doing it, I don't know. If you want to see Hamlet done the traditional way, there is no lack of opportunity, after all.

(Good post from E10 above too.)

There's a lot of stuff that I'd champion someone's right to do while very likely loathing the outcome. I think this Shakespeare thing would qualify. However, I did see 'The Compleat Works of Wm Shakespeare (in 90 minutes)" a few years back, and it was a panic. Chacun a son gout.

Is "a panic" a good or a bad thing?

A good thing. Unless it's happening in a crowded, smoke-filled theatre.
But in this case, good.

What does "right" mean here? No-one's proposing it be made illegal.

Well there's an implicit suggestion in Tubbs's thread title that public money shouldn't be spent on this stuff.

Nah, I didn't mean it like that. Their freedom...their whim...their...I dunno...prerogative, if you will.

Oh, you meant Tubby. Yeah, he probably meant that. The philistine bastard.

It was a light-hearted thread title. Something I always say when I see something in the arts I don't like the sound of. I accept the right of people involved in the arts to do stuff I don't like. This might well be an earner anyway.

Mash-ups are planned. SSS doesn't get the BSL crowd to shout out the instructions, does he?

The spectre of Improv haunts this discussion. It is that that we fear.

QUOTE:
It is that that we fear

Yeah, it does seem so.

Why?