Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Hark, Will Thou Understand??

We had a very busy day on Saturday. Along with our wonderful spring romp at The Spring Art Hop, we had tickets to the Nashville Children's Theatre's production of Robin Goodfellow.

For those of you not versed in children's theatre Robin Goodfellow is a children's adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had been looking forward to this play all season long because a) I have actually never seen the play before (my bumble Kansas public school education left a little something to be desired in the literature section) and b) I wanted to see the kid's reaction to what would be our first somewhat older children's play. My assumption, of course, when I heard that this was adapted for children, would be that they would convert the old English into a more modern understandable English and keep the storyline. And so I was quite shocked when the play opened and Robin Goodfellow (who was Puck from the original play) began spouting off Elizabethan English. My heart sank into my shoes. I thought the kids wouldn't understand what was going on, they would get bored and wouldn't enjoy themselves. As usual, I shouldn't underestimate my children. They both sat in their chairs intently watching the whole play. There were times when Greyson looked a little confused (Quinn was with Raif and so I don't know how he handled these parts) and so I quickly whispered into his ear what was going on and he smiled and continued watching. They laughed at the appropriate times and at the end of play declared it a winner and promptly wanted to see it again.

One small step for man, one giant leap for culturing of the Erim children.

No comments: