Love and Death (I think?)

To start, the first two acts to me appear to be a classic Shakespearean setup where I feel the play will continue as all Shakespearean plays with love and tragedy.  My first take away from the story is that it may be the first love triangle written and is also the only example of a love triangle I’ve heard of that is a true triangle, with all three characters loving one character and having another character love them.  Love triangles aside I believe that this Shakespearean play meshes well with a musical I saw over the weekend, “The Adams Family”.  Both plays involve love, humor, and are also dark. 

“The Adams Family” uses love and humor similarly to the Twelfth Night, its just the dark tones of the plays that are different.  In the musical I saw the dark tone was set as a back drop, to be used comically amongst characters.  The music numbers where fun to listen to but the heart and soul of the musical came from the individual characters themselves and how they were setup.  I grew attached to each character, with all of their very specific quirks and each is now forever in my mind almost like a long lost friend.

This is very different from Shakespeares characters which to me are never too interesting.  The plays follow a similar setup of creating romantic interest between characters and then this love interfering with the character’s better judgments.  Then some sort of confusion ensues and just about everyone dies, its interesting the first few times but then you start expecting a tragedy like a twist in an M. Night Shyamalan movie, its never actually a surprise.  But who knows maybe twelfth night will be different.