{"id":19924,"date":"2019-01-30T16:56:55","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T21:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=19924"},"modified":"2019-01-30T16:56:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T21:56:55","slug":"in-the-campfire-light-waiting-on-the-ghost-of-john-barrymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2019\/01\/30\/in-the-campfire-light-waiting-on-the-ghost-of-john-barrymore\/","title":{"rendered":"In the campfire light, waiting on the ghost of John Barrymore"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Your Humble Blogger will be starting a new role soon\u2014playing the ghost of John Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet<\/cite>. \r\n

I don\u2019t hate Hamlet<\/i>.\r\n

It\u2019s a terrific part, the ghost of John Barrymore, funny with a touch of pathos, big and broad and outrageous. There are a lot of lines\u2014a lot<\/i> of lines\u2014and a fair amount of physical stuff, including a swordfight. The part is designed to lure an actor, and it did lure me. The first time I read the play, I didn\u2019t much like the script; rereading it pre-audition, I enjoyed it a lot more. But the first time, I was the right age to play the lead, and now I am the right age to play the ghost. It\u2019s a much better part.\r\n

The plot, for those who care and don\u2019t already know, revolves around a young actor who was until recently the star of a television prime-time soap, and is now preparing to make his stage debut in the titular role for Joseph Papp\u2019s Shakespeare in the Park. John Barrymore\u2019s ghost assists in that preparation as the lead struggles with the various temptations of art and commerce. There isn\u2019t much to it, as a play, but it\u2019s an entertainment. Perhaps twenty-five years ago I had a lot less respect for an entertainment that\u2019s entertaining. Now, if fifty or a hundred people are willing to come to a show and leave feeling entertained, as far as I\u2019m concerned something has been achieved, even if the play doesn\u2019t have much more than that to offer.\r\n

I don\u2019t expect to do a Production Diary for this one, though. I didn\u2019t actually even mention the last show I was in, it seems. That one was also an entertainment, and while I had a lot of fun doing it, it wasn\u2019t something that I needed to think through in any way that would be interesting to read about. This one might be like that, too. Or perhaps not. We\u2019ll see.\r\n

In David Weston\u2019s Covering McKellen<\/cite>, he writes about being at the read-through thinking will this be my last play?<\/i> and realizing that everyone else is thinking that, too. It means something different when you\u2019re twenty-seven from when you\u2019re seventy-two, though\u2014I\u2019m not fifty yet, and I do sort of expect that people will keep giving me parts, but you never know. And of course middle-age is the time when you stop waiting for those things you\u2019ll be able to do in the future and start worrying about those things you won\u2019t be able to do\u2026 this could well be my last swordfight.\r\n

It will, however, be the first time I\u2019ve had a swordfight onstage that didn\u2019t result in my character\u2019s death. I mean. It\u2019s kind of cheating when my character starts out dead and all, but I\u2019ll take it.\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger still doesn't hate Hamlet.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924","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=19924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19926,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions\/19926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}