-- Num ---- Username ---- Category ------------- Posted -- Expires --- Pages ---
|   871 | WALDMANE     | CHATTER              | 10/08/96 | 10/18/96 |     3    |
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| Description: the bard's comedies as you should see them                      |
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"The Comedy of Two Well-Measured Gentlemen Lost in the Merry Wives of Venice on
                  a Midsummer's Twelfth Night in Winter"
                                  or
"Cymbeline Taming Pericles the Merchant in the Tempest of Love As Much As You
                         Like It For Nothing"
                                  or
                     "The Love Boat Goes To Verona"
                by the RSC (Reduced Shakespeare Company)
 
ACT ONE:  A Spanish duke swears an oath of celibacy and turns the rule of his
kingdom over to his sadistic and tyrannical twin brother.  He learns some
fantastical feats of magic and sets sail for the Golden Age of Greece, along
with his daughters, three beautiful and virginal sets of identical twins.
While rounding the heel of Italy, the duke's ship is caught in a terrible
tempest which, in its fury, casts the duke upon a desert island, along with
the loveliest and most virginal of his daugters, who stumbles into a cave,
where she is molested by a creature who is either a man or a fish or both.
 
ACT TWO:  The long-lost children of the duke's brother, also coincidentally
three sets of identical twins, have just arrived in Italy.  Though still
possessed of an inner nobility, they are ragged, destitute, penniless,
flea-infested shadows of the men they once were, and in the utmost extremity,
are forced to borrow money from and old Jew, who deceives them into putting
down their brains as collateral on the loan.  Meanwhile, the six brothers
fall in love with six italian sisters, three of whom are contentious,
sharp-tounged little shrews, while the other three are submissive, airheaded
little bimbos.
 
ACT THREE:  The shipwrecked identical daughters of the duke wash up on the
shores of Italy, disguise themselves as men, and become pages to the shrews,
and matchmakers to the duke's brother's sons.  They lead all the lovers into a
nearby forest, where, on a midsummer's night, a bunch of mischievous fairies
squeeze the aphroditic juice of a hermaphroditic flower in the shrews' eyes,
causing them to fall in love with their own pages, who in turn have fallen in
love with the duke's brother's sons, while the 'Queen' of the 'fairies' seduces
a jackass, and they all have a lovely bisexual animalistic orgy.
 
ACT FOUR:  The elderly fathers of the Italian sisters, finding their daughters
missing, dispatch messages to the pages, telling them to kill any man in the
vicinity.  However, unable to find men in the forest, the faithful messengers,
in a final, misguided act of loyalty, deliver the messages to each other and
kill themselves.  Meanwhile, the fish-creature and the duke arrive in the
forest disguised as Russians, and for no apparent reason, perform a two-man
underwater version of 'Uncle Vanya'.
 
ACT FIVE:  The duke commands the fairies to right their wrongs.  The pages and
bimbos get into a knock-down drag-out fight in the mud, during which the pages'
clothes get ripped off, revealing female genitalia!  The duke recognizes his
daughters, the duke's brother's sons recognize their uncle, one of the bimbos
grows up to be Vanna White, and they all get married and go out to dinner.
Except for a minor character in the second act who gets eaten by a bear, and
the duke's brother's sons who, unable to pay back the old Jew, give themselves
lobotomies.  And they all live happily ever after.