My third blocking rehearsal included both I,v and II,ii—Malvolio is in seven scenes, and we have now blocked four of them. We are on track for completing rough blocking in a total of six rehearsals, of which I got to skip one. Even if we only keep 75% of that blocking, it’ll still have put us in very good shape for July.\n
I,v is at Olivia’s court; Malvolio goes in and out and in and out and then in and out again. I don’t have a name for the scene yet. I more or less think of it as the introduction<\/i> to the character, but that’s not really what is going on in the scene. It’s a series of spars, more or less—he sneers at Feste, when Olivia is showing favor to the fool, and then comes in to talk to Olivia about sparring with Cesario at the door, and then comes in again to be sent on an errand with the ring. The blocking is quite clear: Malvolio leads the entrance down the stairs and into the court, taking up what is clearly an accustomed position behind and slightly to the right of Olivia’s favorite chair. I advance on Feste and then as I turn my back on her to address my Lady, she goofs on me—I think I will have to throw in a spin back to catch her at it. Well, we shall see, plenty of time to work out that sort of thing. We’ve already added a bit to my first exit ( Go you, Malvolio. If it be a suit from the Count, I am sick, or not at home; what you will, to dismiss it.<\/i>) to emphasize both Malvolio’s smarmy sycophancy and also Olivia’s somewhat high-strung dithering. Well, not dithering, really, but a sort of changeability or willfulness—Olivia is described as stubborn or unyielding because she won’t accept Orsino’s marriage proposal, but I think that’s an error, or at least not how we’re playing it. Olivia has rejected Orsino but otherwise has no definite plans for the future. She has to be in a frame of mind that is open to the Cesario thunderbolt, and while I don’t think she is looking for love she has got to be looking at least for something to look for, and with enough energy to make it interesting for the audience. I think we want to feel as if Olivia’s court is on a precipice from the moment we enter it, and whether it will be saved or ruined, it will be transformed. Oh, you could play Olivia as a marble statue brought to life by love, and that is probably most often done, but I think a powder-keg Olivia is both funnier and truer. And easier for Malvolio, too.\n
Anyway, Malvolio out, business between Feste and Olivia, Malvolio returns to whine about Cesario at the door. Again, I don’t (yet) understand why Malvolio doesn’t just come back in dusting his hands, and tell Olivia that yond young fellow has been sent back to the Count with a broken head. I wonder… I wonder if Malvolio is, or might be, jealous of Feste’s influence, and at the moment, after Olivia’s rebuke ( O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio<\/i>) he decides to dump this problem on the Lady for once, to emphasize how badly she needs him to handle things for her. It would be a terrible idea, but a terrible idea that Malvolio might have. Hm. If I go with that, I might have to tone down Malvolio’s pique at the boy. Hm. I think I will need to chat with the director about this.\n
My third entrance in the scene is brief. I have a bit of business with the ring, and we will need to time out my various false exits. I do think that at this point Malvolio toys a bit with his power… that is, when Olivia sends him, he pauses, condescendingly, possibly more than condescendingly, until explodes a bit at him. There are opportunities for bits of business with the delay; I’m not sure we need them.\n
There’s an intervening scene with Antonio and Sebastian, and then II,ii is Malvolio and Cesario. We aren’t planning on doing the bit where Malvolio sees Sebastian at the end of II,i (a shame, really—my preference is to heighten as much as possible the twin joke, but there it is, and in truth if Shakespeare wanted a bit there he was perfectly capable of writing it) so the scene opens with Cesario and then Malvolio enters in pursuit. The trick there will be to catch his (her) attention without yielding center stage. And, ideally, without moving quickly or otherwise softening from elevated levels of pomposity. I think I’ve got a nice bit with the ring (as we are doing it on modern dress, Malvolio will not have a Staff of Office and thus cannot do the traditional business of sliding the ring onto the tip of the staff and extending the staff before tapping the ring off on the ground. Ah, well.\n
This second scene is where Malvolio’s derhotic accent will blossom, if I can make it work. Our director wants me to keep playing with it. In I,v there are only a few r’s to work with ( barren rascal<\/i> being the best, and shrewishly<\/i> the only other significant one) but in II,ii is all about a ring<\/i>. Ideally, the audience will notice it in that first scene, and then laugh at it in my second, and then get used to it in my third scene, and be ready to laugh again in the letter scene. Well, and we’ll see.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger knows that this all contains spoilers for the production; Gentle Readers who might conceivably attend may want to skip these entries and read them after. Or just skip them, you know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[218,217],"class_list":["post-15304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater","tag-malvolio","tag-shakespeare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16421,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15304\/revisions\/16421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}