Hospital Beds and Angry Fairies: A Modern Take on a Shakespeare Classic
February 16, 2012
Messing with Shakespeare is hardly anything new. His universal themes can come alive and reveal even deeper depths when applied to a different place or time. Also, how many times do you want to watch Romeo climb up a trellis in Elizabethan pantaloons? From the serious-minded (Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth) to the ill-conceived (Julia Stiles in O) to the whackadoo (Hamlet 2), Shakespeare’s characters have wound up in all sorts of times and places.
Usually the attempts to mess with Shakespearian setting have to do with desperation to lure in jaded fans or new audiences that are uncomfortable with antequated speech. Someitmes you’ve gotta wonder if the producers were just getting high backstage. (“It’s Othello… in SPACE.”)*
For Chris Adrian, author of The Great Night, the choice seems much more personal. Read on…
Stevenson’s Lastest: A Sugar Buzz of a Novel
January 20, 2012
Neal Stephenson’s REAMDE, an action-packed roller coaster sparked by an MMORPG-based virus, has all the ingredients of a great thriller. Cunning hackers. A reclusive millionaire. Vengeful Russian mobsters. Heartless Terrorists. The book’s incredible pacing makes its 1000+ pages fly by, and many of the characters are compelling people—individuals we feel we know and care about. Read on…