Or, Shakespeare For The Tremulous And Neurotic:
Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise.
More recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company felt it necessary to forewarn visitors that its production of Hans Christian Andersen’s dark fairy tale The Red Shoes features both loud music and “haze.” Because in a tale of mind-controlling shoes and amputated feet, the haze is the thing you really want to watch out for.
And because you can never have enough of this tiresome contrivance:
Presumably, it was felt to be a shocking twist. Mind-wrenching stuff.
Ah, these fearless correctors of our history and culture. Whose weird mental twitching we’ve seen before.
And so, the modern sensibility, the approved outlook on things, is one in which we are to view cross-dressing perverts striding into schoolgirls’ toilets and changing rooms as in no way provocative or untoward, and regarding which one mustn’t bat an eye, while simultaneously trembling at the prospect of Shakespeare’s Tempest containing scenes of bad weather.
A mindset in which almost any dramatic work that predates Instagram must now come with spoilers. Which does rather appear to defeat the object.
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