加勒比海出自莎士比亚笔下?

REBA: I guess so. And Joey Brown - I'm blanking on the part, but he was the actor who's�

CONAN: Rubber-faced actor, yes.

REBA: That donkey's head?

CONAN: Yes.

CARLO: Bottom. Yeah. And�

CONAN: No, I don't think that was a, you know, resetting of Shakespeare. That was just an interesting cast.

REBA: Yeah. But it made it memorable to me. I also had seen - I grew up in Connecticut, near the Stratford Shakespeare festival. And as a kid, I got to see some dress rehearsals with (unintelligible) playing the King.

CONAN: A lot of kings in Shakespeare, but�

REBA: On the character's name. This is also �Midsummer Night's Dream.�

CONAN: Oh, all right. All right. Reba, thank you very much for the call. Appreciate it.

REBA: Sure.

CONAN: Bye-bye. And we have all seen Shakespeare in so many - in fact, at the Folger a few years ago, we saw Patrick Stewart in a version of �Othello� where he played �Othello� and all of the other characters were black.

Mr. DOUGLAS: Right.

CONAN: And that is, again, another way of making you look differently at the play. And I wonder, the Caribbean voices, how does it make you hear Shakespeare differently?

Mr. DOUGLAS: As I said earlier, the music - the inherent musicality in the Caribbean dialect speaking the King's English is so seductive. And with very intelligent actors, which I have in this production, you know, they are not undermining the complexity of the words or the given circumstances. And the combination, it's - you're dealing with some very difficult matters in this play, particularly the wedding, when Hero is basically called a whore at her wedding�

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. DOUGLAS: �in public. And I chose not to undercut the intensity of that. And then on top of that - and some of your listeners will know what I'm talking about - if that happened at a black wedding - total chaos and pandemonium. What's wonderful about Shakespeare's language, though, is that he can contain even the extremity of those emotional reactions. So, the combination of the lilt of the dialect with those given circumstances makes it palatable without backing off of the intensity of the situations.

CONAN: We're talking with director Timothy Douglas, who directed "Much Ado About Nothing," currently running at the Folger Shakespeare Theater here in Washington, D.C. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And let's get Paul on the line. Paul calling from St. Louis.

PAUL (Caller): Hi, guys.

Mr. DOUGLAS: Hi.

PAUL: My favorite remake is Shakespeare's "The Tempest" done with Robby the Robot playing the Ariel character in "Forbidden Planet."

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Monsters from the id.

PAUL: Absolutely. Just an absolutely fantastic movie. They got on the edge of campy and very serious. It was a whole lot of fun. And it took sci-fi to a new level for the time.

CONAN: All right. Paul, thanks very much.

Mr. DOUGLAS: Fantastic.

CONAN: All right. Here's an email from Daniel in Portland: my 14-year-old daughter just realized this weekend that Disney's movie "The Lion King" is in many ways a retelling of Hamlet. Uncle kills father, son visited by ghost of dad, son seeks to reclaim kingdom. Not all the parallels are there, less death in the Disney version.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOUGLAS: I actually assisted on a stage version of Disney's musical "Hunchback of Notre Dame." And during the rehearsal process, the Disney executives insisted that Esmeralda live.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOUGLAS: And so, I've seen a version where Esmeralda lived. But even they realized, no, they - we had to let her go.

CONAN: Right, right.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Let's talk with Lisa. Lisa calling from Phoenix.

LISA (Caller): Hi.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

LISA: Hello?

CONAN: Yeah, you're on the air.

LISA: Hi. Yes, I don't have a favorite, per se. I have always enjoyed "West Side Story,� which was a take off of "Romeo and Juliet."

Mr. DOUGLAS: Yes.

LISA: But I really have a (unintelligible) to know if there will be encore performances or if the production will be traveling. I just heard about it now. I keep my radio tuned to NPR, so I - that's how I get my information about what's going on, on the other side of the country here. But I'd love to see your performance. Don't think I can get to D.C. anytime soon, wanting to know if it'll be traveling.

Mr. DOUGLAS: At this point, there are no plans for its future. It ends this Sunday. But I have great hope that I'll get to do another version of it somewhere else. And, also, if you ever get to D.C., this production has been archived. And through the�

LISA: Oh, wonderful.

Mr. DOUGLAS: �Folger Shakespeare Library, I believe you can arrange to see it, if you wish.

LISA: Oh, great. Well, thank you very much.

CONAN: Okay, Lisa. We will welcome you on your next trip to Washington, then.

LISA: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: Bye-bye. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Diana. Diana with us from San Anselmo in California.

DIANA (Caller): Yes. Hi.

CONAN: Go ahead, please.

DIANA: I have a least favorite adaptation. I saw the "Midsummer Night's Dream" in Chicago at the Goodman, in - it must have been 1991 or '92. And they had done it very punk.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

DIANA: Like, the director was into the darker, steamy side of the sexuality in "Midsummer Night's Dream," which I had never really been aware of.

(Soundbite of laughter)

DIANA: You know, and so, Puck came out, his first opening scene, he had the Mohawk and he had a can of spray paint and he wrote - well, I can't say it on the radio.

(Soundbite of laughter)

DIANA: But he wrote his name minus the line in the P, and then went back and connected it to make it a Puck.

CONAN: I see.

DIANA: And I have to say, my father was with me and he hadn't seen very much Shakespeare. And halfway through, he turned to me and said, is it usually like this?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOUGLAS: Well, you know, I didn't get to see that production. But - and I - by your description, one thing I can say in defense of it is that the beginning of "Midsummer Night's Dream" with Theseus and Hippolyta, Hippolyta is a prisoner of war. And there are some very deep sexual politics going on there. And it's rarely brought up, because we only like to think of "Midsummer Night's Dream" as the romance between the lovers and the fun times with the fairies.

But things like "Midsummer," and also "Pericles," which is not often done, which is also considered one of the romances, the opening is about incest. But we conveniently want to go by that because it's unpleasant in the same way that it - you know, we want Esmeralda to live in "Hunchback of Notre Dame." So, again, I can't defend the production itself, but I understand the take on it�

CONAN: All right.

Mr. DOUGLAS: �trying to give an American audience an equivalent impact of what the Elizabethans understood about these plays.

CONAN: Thanks for the call, Diana.

DIANA: Thank you.

CONAN: And we hope you got your money back.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: Here's an email from John in Minneapolis. I saw a great high school production of "Twelfth Night" recently, set in post-war, pre-revolutionary Cuba, and it worked great. Viola and Sebastian were sibling movie stars whose plane had crashed there. Olivia and Orsino would break into Spanish occasionally, quite an impression for high school. I'm not sure�

(Soundbite of laughter)

CONAN: �if that worked. But apparently, it worked well for that writer. Thank you very much, Timothy Douglas. And good luck.

Mr. DOUGLAS: Thank you. Thank you.

CONAN: Timothy Douglas' currently production is "Much Ado About Nothing." It's running at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre here in Washington through November 29th. And he joined us today from member station WHAD in Milwaukee.