Sunday, March 16, 2008

Laurel and Hardy and Macbeth,



Yesterday I went out to Brooklyn and saw Patrick Stewart in an innovative production of Macbeth. (Macbeth, for those of you who don't know it, is not a new McDonald's burger.) The production was modern--complete with impressive lighting, videos projections, dissonant sound design and hip-hopping "weird sisters." There was fear, horror, laughter and language. Timeless truths. All in Brooklyn.

Then at home on Turner Classic Movies I watched two Laurel and Hardy essentials. The Music Box in which the boys try to move a piano up a steep flight of steps (yes, the plot is that complicated) and Sons of the Desert, in which the boys try to go to a convention in Chicago.

Yes, Laurel and Hardy are hardly high comedy. But as anyone, even Shakespeare, will tell you there's a lot of comedy in a fat man falling into a fountain. Stan Laurel was a genius. His face, his eyebrows, his mangling of the language ("we're like two peas in a pot") are genius.

I guess there is an advertising point here.

The threesome of Laurel, Hardy and Macbeth are original, real and evocative. They move and touch. Kind of what advertising should do.

No comments: