After seeing some bad adaptations of my revered "Alice's Adventures Underground," I decided to try this. Though the comedies aren't generally the stuff around which to build lives, a few from the middle period do matter.
During this period, Shakespeare seems to have found one of his three balances among the structure of poetical phrases, the structure of poetic introspection and the long form shape of the story. Of the three, adapters must toss the language, so the measure of success is how well the small concepts weave into the larger. Supposedly, if this is done well enough some of the subtle magic of why the original is so hypnotic will be conveyed. In other words, we should get joy from the sheer difficulty of the conceptual gymnastics as well as the pleasure from a good experience from the play itself.
This wins in my book.
The key trick is that the domain has been shifted to folks in the business of TeeVee broadcasting. So there is a built in fold in the very lives of everyone involved. We naturally accept the two conspiratorial theaters that are woven, one to create a wedding and another to foil one.
The production is good, earnest, unconstrained.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
