Alright this past weekend I saw a pretty cool show at my university, "The Heart of Robin Hood." Now this wasn't an entirely perfect production, but there were a lot of really cool things about it. Plus it's just nice to see a show about my obsessions haha.
The good things included the scenic design being really cool. It was in a forest with a ton of ramps, and they had an alcove in the back for a band to play during the show. It also was just a fun production with a lot of funny aspects and some camp. There was this one character, Pierre, who was very funny and constantly broke the fourth wall. In the end, he wraps up the play saying that this show is about how he found his heart, meaning that he found kids that he ends up adopting. Which is really sweet!
The play suffered though from what I think a lot of Robin Hood media suffers from which is that it didn't know what tone it was going with. There was so much camp and silly things, especially in the second half. But the first half involved one man getting beheaded, another losing a tongue really bloodily, and a person being hanged and physically hanging there. Which does not match up. It's a common issue though, I think a lot of people want to make this an intense story about good and evil, but also the villains are comically incompetent and there's anachronisms throw around to be self-aware. And you can't really have both.
The other thing I want to mention is that the play was interesting because it mostly was about Marion, and her dressing as a boy and going into the woods as Martin, who is the idealized Robin Hood. But while that's cool and all, the play is still "The Heart of Robin Hood." I guess we shouldn't mistake who the original legend is about!
But still it was such a fun time, and it kind of was about storytelling and nature which is rad. I had a lot of fun.
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