Desperate Housewives of Shakespeare's London

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Okay, if you're anywhere in the vicinity of New London, Connecticut on Friday night, you should TOTALLY come to my show.

It is, as you can tell from this title, called "Desperate Housewives of Shakespeare's London, a Lute Song Cabaret" and is a mash-up of English lute-songs and scenes/dialogues/monologues from Shakespeare and other 16th Century playwrights.

The goal, I think, is to convince people once and for all that Renaissance and Baroque music are not, in fact, boring. It can be pensive, rhetorical, flowery, suggestive and downright filthy.

There are lots and lots of downright filthy songs in this show. Lots.

There's also a couch on stage, so you can fill in the blanks.

Here, for example, is the text to a lovely little gem called "It fell on a sommer's day:"

It fell on sommers day,
While sweete Bessie sleeping laie
In her bower, on her bed,
Light with curtains shadowed;

Jamy came,
Shee him spies,
Op'ning halfe her sleeping eyes.

Jamy stole in through the dore,
She lay slumbring as before;
Softly to her he drewe neare,
She heard him, yet would not heare;
Bessie vowed not to speak;
......

(insert some innuendo, then follow:)

Jamy then began to play,
Bessie as one buried lay,
Gladly through this sleight
Deceiv'd in her own deceit;
And since this trounce begoon (began)
She sleeps ev'rie afternoone.
And, since this trance begoon,
She sleeps ev'rie afternoone.

(In this version, a woman is singing the lines about Bessie, and a man sings those about Jamy. I think that originally it was written for one voice)

Whew!!

So yeah, Friday night at 8pm at Connecticut College. It's part of the Amherst Early Music Festival, so if you look up their website, there will be info.