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Grey Matter (Matière Grise) 

2011, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza

Neo-Andean Architecture

Designed by Freddy Mamani

i saw the production that's currently on at the globe - i don't know the text at all so can't speak in specifics to what they cut or changed but the big ones seem to be that they spanishified everyone (princess of spain rather than france, negotiating cession of aragon rather than aquitaine) and added a whole bunch of song and dance numbers including large amounts of flamenco.

to me the flamenco aspect was so perfect - the dancing was super expressive & exuberant, and fully functional as a form of characterization that complemented the wittiness of the text really well. the dancing was also sexy & the men were all in the tightest pants imaginable which i thought was a good vibe to introduce to all those already charged interactions! costumes quite good in general. it was relatively restrained in the slapstick department (well, for the globe, but in their defense they're so good at it!) and they definitely did not compromise on verbal sparring - berowne & rosaline and especially the king & princess (!!!) had wild charisma and such intense passionate chemistry that transferred perfectly from their verbal interactions to their dancing & back. are they looking for a third etc

i can see where the impulse to make it a musical comes from - SO MUCH of this play rhymes wow!! i really liked that about it. this version didn't go down that path generally but the scene where the king's men get rid of the oath did get in on the slapstick - hiding behind stuff obviously lends itself to that - and the jukebox musical vibe a bit, they had the men delivering their love confessions to the tune of different "funny songs" (the king's was despacito for example). i thought this was great lol but i can see how it would be annoying or make the play less interesting if drawn out over more scenes. the physicality of the acting in that scene while playing into the silliness to some extent was also - i found - quite raw and moving in moments & also again very sexy which made the romances very believable & easy to get invested in even as you laughed at them.

i thought the pacing was a little weird, partly because of the way the end of the play is structured & partly i think because of where they placed the intermission: immediately after the love confessions and oath-breaking scene, much closer to the two-thirds mark duration-wise than to the halfway point (i had a standing ticket haha oof ouch my lower back) and such that my friends and i turned to each other as people started streaming out and went "what's next?" because it felt like the main conflict of the play had basically just been fully resolved & now all the couples would just get together no problem. i can see why they did this, it's a long & intense & very cathartic scene to go out on, but a little too much so i feel... for me this kind of made the muscovites scene which came right after seem too contrived & silly without the emotional stakes of the previous scenes and i ended up feeling like it dragged a little, which is a shame because it's a fun scene! the nine worthies scene was also kind of whatever to me, but then pageant scenes tend to be. they added queen elizabeth the first as one of the worthies idk.

the uneven sectioning also didn't help with the tonal gap around the rape accusation (? it was played as one in this version in any case) / duel / death of the princess' father at the end, which i understand is probably a difficulty for any production; no particularly inventive solution here, the events happen suddenly and quickly & they do the sad song & then make sure to do a dance number after the curtain call so everyone leaves happy. they did try to sow the seeds for flashes of solemnity (as the text does) with the princess' hunting scene, which they replaced with a bullfight, with a minimalist bull costume (see here) & a very slow and elaborate choreography with a lot of pathos & blood, and the princess' speech about fame & pity for the animal played very straight and given quite a long chunk of time which i didn't fully understand at first (i went in completely blind re: the contents of the play btw) & then when i saw the ending i thought ohhhh well that makes sense. didn't quite "fix it" for me - the tragic aspect still felt very distant from the rest of the action, more of a play within a play than the nine worthies scene itself - but i could see the vision. (not that i think these aspects necessarily need to be fixed either - the two-tone colouring & unconventional ending are really fascinating in their own right! but this production was, as far as i could tell, trying to solve this as a problem at least to some extent & i don't think they managed to make it stick.)