MAKE HAPPY by Bo Burnham (2016)

"I just hope I don't get more from this than you do." - Bo Burnham, Make Happy

Disclaimer: Firstly, if you’re going to engage with any discussion of the ideas of audience and celebrity Make Happy examines, I would much rather you watch this interview than read the review below. Bo says what I do in a similarly not-concise, but far more articulate manner. Secondly, I recognise that I went way too hard on the pull quotes in this, but to be honest, you’re lucky I didn’t transcribe the entire hour. Finally, this review is constructed upon my personal reaction to the special. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

What does it mean to have an audience? As the 70s and 80s gave way to the era of self-expressionism in the 90s and 2000s, the answer inevitably changed. Comedian Bo Burnham, light of my goddamn life and born in the 1990s, is one of the most qualified people working today to talk about what the concept of the ‘audience’ has become, and this he does in his breath-taking new comedy special, Make Happy, which I have already watched three times since it aired on Netflix on June 4 and which I literally cannot stop thinking about. Is having an audience a good thing? Let’s get introspective.

I’ve always found how Bo interprets having an audience incredibly interesting. To me, the dynamic between Bo and his live audience in Make Happy was noticeably different to his previous show, what. (2013). Burnham’s YouTube channel (and his content) have been popular since 2006, currently sitting at 990K subscribers and 169M views, but what. projected Burnham into ‘fandom’ territory, because it was accessible in a way Burnham’s previous work hadn’t been: the entire hour was uploaded to YouTube. Make Happy responds to this dynamic change, examining what Bo’s new audience expects from him. “You want me to get introspective? Let’s get introspective”, he says, referencing what a typical Bo Burnham show is ‘supposed’ to be: dick jokes interspersed by philosophical introspection. Bo’s audience has come to expect, maybe even demand, certain themes or ideas be developed across Bo’s discrete comedy shows. To me, comedy is a medium that can, and should, stay top-down: the performer controls what the audience receives, but this line shows how the tables have turned, how comedy can become bottom-up, with the audience demanding a certain quality and quantity from the performer. This backs the performer into a corner, which Bo dissects in Make Happy’s powerful closing number, Can’t Handle This:

I wanna please you, but I wanna stay true to myself / I wanna give you the night out that you deserve / But I wanna say what I think, and not care what you think about it…

A certain anxiety toward performing develops when your audience builds expectations of what content you should be making, and the ideas that content should represent. Burnham has stated in multiple interviews that Make Happy is largely focused on the anxiety he faces as a performer, but it’s visible in much of his previous work, too, notably in Art is dead from Words Words Words:

I am an artist, please, God, forgive me / I am an artist, please don’t revere me / I am an artist, please don’t respect me / I am an artist, feel free to correct me...

And the stunning closing piece from what., We Think We Know You, in which an archetypal LA agent describes the direction in which Bo should take his comedy in order to “take his career to the next level”:

You’ve got all these young fans, which is great, because young people, they’re very passionate, and they’re very reliable consumers, and what you gotta do in order to take your career to the next level -- you gotta cater more heavily to them […] Write a silly song about Facebook... write some jokes about Twitter, or sugary cereals, or Razor scooters. Relate to them.

“Relate to them” is the controversial statement. Bo says in Make Happy that he entered theatre and performance as a teenager, and that as a comedian, he is supposed to talk about what he knows and is good at, which is performing. To talk about Facebook and Twitter and sugary cereals and Razor scooters would be disingenuous, yet a show about performing wouldn’t be relatable to people that aren’t performers -- but what Bo found is that “I don’t think anyone isn’t”. He goes on to explain this further:

I was born in 1990, and I was sort of raised in America when it was a cult of self-expression, and I was just taught, you know, express myself and have things to say and everyone will care about them, and I think everyone was taught that, and most of us found out no one gives a shit what we think! So we flock to performers by the thousands ‘cause we’re the few that have found an audience...

We, Generation Y, have been taught our whole lives to perform as if people care what we have to say -- dance like everyone’s watching, so to speak -- and when we realise no one gives a shit, we flock to the people who’ve managed to get others to care. Thus we arrive at my original point: my fascination with how Bo interprets the concept of having an audience. The performer-audience relationship is a bizarre, complicated, and entirely human phenomenon -- a cycle of idolisation, a cult of expressionism. The rise of the Internet encourages this culture. Turning up the house lights and kneeling at eye level with the audience, Bo says the same in Make Happy:

Social media is just the market’s answer to a generation that’s demanded to perform. So the market said, “Here, perform everything to each other all the time for no reason”. It’s prison. It’s horrific. It is performer and audience melded together [...] I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.

If you can live your life without an audience, you should do it. An ‘audience’ has become a void into which one can scream to find validation and success. In Can’t Handle This, Burnham sings, “Part of me loves you, part of me hates you / Part of me needs you, part of me fears you”. As performers, we project onto this disembodied stage, clinging to the hope that someone will give a shit about us, and as audience members, we pretend to give a shit about each other, but we don’t, not really. As Burnham says, the arrogance of the Me Generation is taught, or it is cultivated. The performer-audience relationship is one big circle-jerk, and yet we’re stuck here, jerking each other off, because we have never known anything else. We have become slaves to a lifestyle we never even chose. “Everyone wants to express themselves”, Bo states in an interview; “everyone wants to be heard.” We are all performers by nature and by upbringing and by habit, yet if there is one thing we should not do, it is perform. We can all have an audience if we choose one. The question is: should we?

TL;DR: On that thoroughly depressing note, I’d like to remind you that I actually loved Make Happy. There’s been talk of calling it genuine art, and Bo a genuine artist. I would not contest that for a second. Some have suggested that Make Happy transcends comedy and is actually performance art. I’d agree with that, too. Make Happy is electrifying -- poignant, cynical, self-deprecating and ruthless, but above all, it’s triumphant, in the ideas it wants to represent and the style in which it does so. Bo is one of the best in the game. I hope he’s happy.

WORKS CITED

• Burnham, Bo. Make Happy (2016).
• Burnham, Bo. what. (2013).
• Burnham, Bo. Words Words Words (2010).
• Burnham, Bo. Interview by Chelsea Locascio. YouTube. LCNJ Lions Television, 3 Mar. 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.
• Zielonka, Adam. "Bo Burnham’s Message for the Social Media Generation He Epitomizes." Medium. Medium, 6 June 2016. Web. 7 June 2016.
• Zoglo. “Bo Burnham: An Entertainer [in an industry he can't stand].” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 6 March 2016. Web. 7 June 2016.

TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer (2005)

“I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.” - Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Disclaimer: This review is constructed upon my personal reaction to the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

My entire life, I have been devout about one thing and one thing only: my hatred of Twilight. Given that my lord and saviour is Her Ladyship JK Rowling, there was really nothing else I could logically do: liking Harry Potter and liking Twilight were two mutually exclusive phenomena. Neither could live while the other survives, shall we say. Thus, for as long as I can remember, my life's work has been bashing Twilight with everything I've got. I’ve long considered it my passion, if not my profession.

It came to my attention a month ago that I had never actually read Twilight.

The following question was then posed: how can you hate something you’ve never read? Easily, I argued, but the table had already been set. Being the kind of person who likes to be informed when they absolutely demolish things, I begrudgingly decided it may be in my best interest to actually read Twilight, so with high skepticism, I proceeded to do the one thing I thought I never would: I read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.  

If we're being completely honest, I did not hate Twilight. This, however, was due to the fact that my initial expectations were really, really low. The only reason I expected to enjoy this reading experience was because I am a stone cold bitch who wholeheartedly thrives on ripping shit into things, but there were, admittedly, some things that I didn’t outright hate: Edward’s family history was vaguely interesting, and I thought the ending was well-paced in consideration with the tone Meyer was aiming for. The rest, however, was terrible. To quote a friend of a friend (out of context, but it’s fine sshhhh), Twilight was a “piece of shit mess”. The monotonous plot -- a tawdry account of a mortal teenage girl and a 100-year-old vampire falling in love -- did nothing but meander until the last quarter. Before then, Bella just mooned and moaned about how much she loooooOOOOOoooooved Edward, even though she had known him for a grand total of 5 minutes. There were entire sections of the book I simply crossed out, so pointless did I feel they were to the overall progression of the story. Bella is petulant, miserable, irrational, unreasonable, and childish, while Edward’s mood and characterisation are about as consistent and reliable as that one friend you haven’t seen in 5 years because they always cancel on your catch-up plans at the last minute. The concept is ridiculous, the book takes itself far too seriously, I could not for the life of me give you a strong reason as to why Bella is so clumsy and why Edward finds it so damn charming --  all this and more gave me endless grief as I struggled through Twilight, and yet amazingly, I still have not mentioned the actual focus of this review: the infantilization of Bella.

It’s this, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I disliked most about this novel. (Okay, it was actually the time when Bella, in typical Bella fashion, let snow ruin her good day, but that doesn’t found the basis of a good essay.) When Stephenie Meyer released Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined in time for the 10-year anniversary of Twilight, she claimed to have reversed the genders of all the characters because Bella’s damsel-in-distress complex in the Twilight saga had “always bothered [Meyer] a bit”, but I feel like it goes beyond Bella being a damsel in distress; she’s actually characterised as an infant. Bella is handled, both literally and figuratively, as if she is a newborn baby. Edward repeatedly cradles her in his arms -- ‘cradle’ being the buzzword due to the unmistakeable connotation of a baby’s cradle. She also spends most of her spare time sitting in his lap. Meyer had Bella constantly pouting whenever things didn't go her way, and I also noticed Bella had a real habit of throwing tantrums and sulking at the mere prospect of Edward leaving her side. Just put her in a diaper and get it over with, Meyer! Of course, I’m me, so there’s a feminist angle to this. Gwen Sharp put it really well in her blog post, Infantilizing Women, Sexualising Girlishness:

On the one hand, women are portrayed as little girls, as coyly innocent, as lacking in power and [maturity]. On the other hand, child-likeness is sexy, and girls are portrayed as Lolitas whose innocence is questionable.

This could not be more true when it comes to Twilight. On the one hand, Bella is portrayed as a little girl, peevish, immature, and inexperienced (yet also deeply grave and averse to any kind of fun, a ludicrous dichotomy). Yet Bella is also incredibly sexy -- aggressively and uncontrollably lustful, a trait for which Edward often scolds her. What is he: her parent? Bizarrely, I think that's actually what Meyer was going for. Bella's innocence is ferociously alluring to Edward. He coddles her and cuddles her and speaks to her as if she is five years old, yet it's also blaringly obvious he desperately wants to jump her bones. Lisa Wade says it so well, I won’t even bother trying to paraphrase:

The sexualization of girls and the infantilization of adult women are two sides of the same coin. They both tell us that we should find youth, inexperience, and [naivety] sexy in women, but not in men. This reinforces a power and status difference between men and women, where vulnerability, weakness, and dependency and their opposites are gendered traits: desirable in one sex but not the other.

Bella’s naivety and babyishness are paradoxically equated with sex appeal. The fact that Edward totes her around like a child and yet still finds her incredibly sexually attractive creates a power imbalance, with an aggressive, powerful, dominant Edward towering over a submissive and innocent, but still promiscuous Bella (which, incidentally, is the premise of 50 Shades of Grey). The notion becomes that it’s okay for older men to associate innocence and youth with sex, that’s it okay for middle-aged pervs to be turned on by the innocence of teenage girls, that it’s okay for older men to prey on young girls. It's creepy, it's objectifying, it’s disempowering, and it's sexist as hell.

That's enough actual critical analysis for this review. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming: committing the gleeful murder of Twilight. If I were to sum this book up in a word, it would be the one I repeated endlessly whilst I was reading: garbage. Unfocused, self-indulgent, babbling, incoherent garbage. Even aside from its analytical flaws, Twilight is not a good book. I wasn’t sustained or entertained, I didn’t root for or care about anyone; I read to the end simply because I knew I’d be reviewing it. I would not recommend you do the same.

WORKS CITED

• “Piece of shit mess” - Sam Hogan on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 24/03/16
• Sharp, Gwen, PhD. "Infantilizing Women, Sexualizing Girlishness - Sociological Images." The Society Pages. 15 May 2008. Web. 26 May 2016.
• Wade, Lisa, PhD. "Power, Mickey Mouse, and the Infantilization of Women - Sociological Images." The Society Pages. 8 Aug. 2013. Web. 23 May 2016.

THE TRIALS OF APOLLO: THE HIDDEN ORACLE by Rick Riordan (2016)

"Four thousand years of knowledge, the secrets of the universe, a sea of wisdom -- lost, because I can't contain it all in this teacup of a head." - Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE

Disclaimer: This review is constructed upon my personal reaction to the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. SOLANGELO IS CANON I LOVE THE GAYS

One of the pros of being a Percy Jackson fan is that Rick Riordan will not stop writing about the Percy Jackson world. Technically, the series ended in 2009, with the release of The Last Olympian, part five in the five-part Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. However, Riordan decided actually, he wasn’t done yet, and wrote another five-part series: The Heroes of Olympus, picking up where The Last Olympian left off. This series ended in 2014 with The Blood of Olympus, and after ten books, you’d think Rick would’ve had his fill.

You’d be mistaken. He’s relentless.

In 2015, Riordan announced he was writing another five-part series set in the PJO universe. This series, titled The Trials of Apollo, would begin in May 2016 with The Hidden Oracle, and was tasked with filling in all the plot holes The Blood of Olympus left behind. It follows the god Apollo, cast down from Olympus to fulfil some unknown purpose as penance for royally ticking Zeus off. Rick Riordan fans across the world collectively rolled their eyes when The Trials of Apollo was announced, because even though we know Rick won’t “stop beating this dead horse until it stops spitting out money” (will I ever stop with the Bo Burnham references?), we also know we’re going to be the ones shoving dollar bills up that horse’s ass. As soon as The Hidden Oracle arrived at my doorstep, I started reading it.

Riordan’s last couple of books haven’t really done it for me. The Blood of Olympus was enjoyable but brimming with shoddy characterisation and lazy plot holes, and Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer, the first book in a sister series to PJO, was fun, but not particularly memorable. Thankfully, The Hidden Oracle is great -- funny, action-packed, clever, progressive. It paid homage to the sarcastic, dry humour Percy Jackson is famous for, something I feel we lost sight of in Magnus Chase. Apollo’s characterisation was really unique -- I found Magnus very stylistically similar to Percy, making his voice feel awkward and unoriginal. Apollo couldn’t have been more different to Percy; whereas Percy is light-hearted, goofy, and completely and utterly selfless, Apollo is narcissistic, arrogant, and frankly, annoying. I liked about him, though, as it marked him as truly different from Percy. There was a refreshingly lyrical quality to Apollo’s narrative -- many sections of the book were beautifully eloquent, something I’m not used to with Riordan’s simplistic writing style. The fan service throughout the book was also glorious; so many new storylines that were only touched on in The Blood of Olympus were finally fully fleshed out. Rick Riordan responded to his fans’ prayers/angry tweets. The fandom rejoiced en masse.

It’s not, however, these simple, aesthetic aspects that made The Trials of Apollo great; for me, it was the social issues Riordan tackled. Inarguably, the best part of the book is the fact that Apollo is openly and proudly bisexual. This isn’t a spoiler -- it’s accurate historical representation, as in ancient Greek mythology, Apollo fell in love/slept with women and men all the time. The dude got around, and he wasn’t picky. Riordan has impressed me in the past with his representation of gay characters, but I never expected bisexuality to be one of the topics he tackled, as no one ever bothers tackling it. Bisexuality is horrifically underrepresented everywhere except Tumblr, and when it is represented, the character in question is either ambiguously bisexual, or they were just experimenting in college. Apollo is different. There’s no questioning or ambiguity, no insecurity or experimentation; he’s bi, and he doesn’t get why anyone could possibly find it weird. This is such a bold and progressive move for Riordan to have made, and a powerful one, too. Apollo’s nonchalant bisexuality is going to help so many kids come to terms with, accept, and rejoice in their own bi/pansexuality, because Apollo’s mentality shows us bisexuality is completely normal. It doesn’t change anything about him. It’s not weird or out-of-the-ordinary, and I think that’s a super important message for Riordan’s readers to take away from this book. (Side note: my friend and I were reading 1-star reviews of The Hidden Oracle on Amazon, and a majority of them were from homophobic parents complaining that boy-on-boy relationships are ‘inappropriate’ for their children, and declaring they will never buy another Percy Jackson book. There’s another great thing about The Hidden Oracle: it’s weeding out the weak.)

The other issue Riordan discusses in The Hidden Oracle is emotional and psychological abuse. We all know the statistics of physical abuse: in New Zealand, a family violence investigation is recorded every 5 and a half minutes, 1 in 3 Kiwi women experience physical abuse in their lifetime, etcetera, etcetera.  Family Violence Is Not Okay (But It Is Okay To Ask For Help). Physical and domestic abuse are awful phenomena we need to seriously crack down on, but emotional abuse is almost completely overlooked and invalidated. Riordan, then, changed the game. One of the characters in The Hidden Oracle suffers from emotional abuse by a parent figure who threatens to unleash their ‘angry side’ if the character in question doesn’t do as they are told. Like a Gemini, the abusive character is two-faced; they present themselves as having split personalities they can’t control. The victim is manipulated into subservience by the threat of any disobedience unleashing the physically abusive personality of the abuser. Apollo, bless his heart, goes on to actively comment on the situation, lamenting how gruesome and manipulative emotional abuse can be. Riordan choosing to put emphasis on this issue was simply wonderful. I admire him for using his platform to bring light to controversies we are usually too uncomfortable or ignorant to confront. When we don’t talk about emotional and psychological abuse, when we stigmatise it and invalidate it and treat it like a joke, we alienate victims of this kind of abuse. We make them feel alone, which, as Riordan has pointed out in The Hidden Oracle, isn’t true at all.  

Not everything about The Hidden Oracle was groundbreaking. The writing was funny, but not entirely up to the standard I’ve come to expect. Apollo was unique, but I’m not sure if I liked him as a protagonist all that much. The fan service was satisfying, but I also feel there was a degree of laziness to it, as if Riordan scrolled down his Tumblr dashboard and picked out headcanons he liked. That being said, what the book lacked in character, it really made up for in representation of overlooked social issues, which is such a goddamn pretentious SJW thing for me to say, but it’s true. I joke about having sold my soul to Rick Riordan, but honestly, I don’t really mind. The Percy Jackson world has brought me happiness ever since my dear friend Robyn introduced it to me at the tender age of twelve, and even though I know we’re reaching the point where Riordan should probably just bury the horse, the truth is, I’m glad he won’t, because his books and his characters and his amazing world bring me joy, and that’s all they really have to do.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I discussed this review with my delightful friend Robyn on Skype before publishing it, and to her, I issued the truth: this review is a thinly-veiled attempt to sophisticate my incoherent love of The Gays™. I hope it was a successful attempt, even if it’s completely transparent. Also, I'm both morally and personally inclined to tell you that the reference I made in the introduction -- "we'll stop beating this dead horse when it stops spitting out money" -- is from the song Repeat Stuff by Bo Burnham, which he performed in his comedy show, what., in 2013. It's a great song, and a great show, and I would highly recommend you check it out. It's on YouTube! The whole hour-long show! Amazing!

TWELFTH NIGHT by the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company

Images from eventfinda.co.nz and stuff.co.nz

“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Monday morning. I’m vegetating in my 10am lecture, flipping noncommittally through the week’s copy of Craccum, when the title of the weekly editorial catches my eye: Romeo, Rome-oh No the Pop-up Globe is Closing. As both an English major and a pretentious asshole, great panic naturally ensued: the Pop-up Globe was closing in less than a week, and I, a self-professed (albeit admittedly #fake) Shakespeare fan, had not yet seen a play there.

Synonyms for this situation include: heresy, blasphemy, and absolute travesty.

Anxious to at least see something before the Globe moved on to greener pastures, I hastily booked tickets to see Twelfth Night by myself on Wednesday night, because I’m that person who goes to the theatre alone to “truly immerse myself in the art”, or something similarly aloof and socially alienating. My expectations were neutral: sure, it would be a cool cultural experience, and sure, it would be cool to lose my theatre virginity to a Shakespeare, but that was the extent of it.

My expectations were, it’s fair to say, obliterated.

Were I to call the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company’s rendition of Twelfth Night perfect, I do not feel I would not be exaggerating. The whole experience was simply stunning from start to finish. My jaw hurt from smiling so much; my hands hurt from clapping so much. My legs were killing me because I bought a groundling ticket and had to stand for the three hours, but honestly? Twelfth Night was worth the pain. I was enraptured, enchanted, completely blown away; before I had even left the theatre after the final bow, I was writing this review in my head, confessing to anyone who would listen my undying love for the production. To give you, humble readers who escaped my tirade of praise, an idea of what I so ardently admired and loved about Twelfth Night, here’s an overview:

1. I loved the acting. For me, someone who hasn’t read Twelfth Night and whose knowledge of Shakespeare does not encompass being able to interpret his 15th-century English on the spot, the acting really made the play for me. First and foremost, the all-male cast was hilarious -- all of the female characters were played by extraordinarily talented and highly convincing male actors, but what really got me was the chemistry the cast shared. The quote that comes to mind is, appropriately, Shakespearian: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” (Henry V 4.3). Because that was how it felt: as if I were watching a band of brothers gallivanting about that stage. As if the actors were a family. The interplay was simply infectious, light and flirty and natural – my synesthetic reaction was that the words felt tossed between the characters, the back-and-forth motion of the dialogue coherent and effortless. To sum it up in a word, Twelfth Night was strikingly charismatic, and I blame it all on the acting.

2. I loved the “scary audience interaction parts” -- or, more accurately, I loved the fact that it was meta as hell.  Now, obviously interacting with the audience isn’t a startlingly new innovation; I just thought that the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company did it really, really well. Buying a groundling ticket did mean that I had to stand for three hours, but I’ll say once again that it was worth it, because the yard was the place to be. Countless times did the characters interact with the crowd – gossiping with us, flirting with us, hiding amongst us (that’s right – the cast frequently ventured into the crowd and physically involving us in the play, Malvolio himself approaching me to show me the confessional Olivia had written to him), asking us for advice – it was hilarious to be engaged in such a way, and so much fun, and this is coming from a person who wears headphones with no music playing so that no one will talk to me in public. Involving the audience in the play dissolved the barrier between actor and audience member, so that even though the stage was elevated, I felt as if I were on it myself, an advisor on Olivia’s boy drama, a conspirator in Feste’s mischievous gang, a member of the happy few, the band of brothers who had me so completely transported.

3. I loved the atmosphere. I came away from Twelfth Night overcome by the sensation that I had never experienced anything quite as magical in my life. I can’t put my finger on why my enchantment was so extreme; all I can tell you is that I was moved so deeply, I swear there were cartoon sparkles in my eyes. The god-honest time of my life was had. The whole experience, from the fantastic acting to the awesome audience interaction to the fact that as the cast performed their final bow, a cascade of bubbles floated down from the upper tiers, catching the light like stars – it all came together to produce what to me felt like magic. I’ve said it twice and I’ll say it again: I was enchanted. Captivated. In love. Maybe it’s just me and my extraordinary ability to find beauty in the most mundane of things, but to say I marvelled in the experience would be a criminal understatement. It’s a silly cliché, but I could feel my heart glowing as I stood there beneath the stars.

One review of the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company’s Twelfth Night put it nicely: “I saw Shakespeare as it was meant to be performed” (stuff.co.nz). I could not agree more completely. The production was so intimate, so personal and exciting and, to put it plainly, fun, and for a Shakespearian comedy, I think this was exactly how it should have been portrayed. I’d say I’m sorry to gush, but I’m not; Twelfth Night was perfect, not only as a play but also as an experience I’m going to relive for years to come. Kudos to the Pop-up Globe Theatre Company: your rendition of Twelfth Night is a triumph.

Author’s note: This one’s a little unconventional, but aside from the fact that it’s a play and thus technically a form of literature, I like to live life on the edge. YOLO, and all. Live fast, die young, review plays instead of books or whatever. I’d also like to note that this review is probably the closest I’ve gotten to ever exhibiting, through the medium of the blog post, my violent passion for all things literary, and as a result, it’s a little incoherent. As they say, it can be really hard to describe why you love something, but I’ve tried my best with this. (Side note: if we’re being honest, a big part of my reaction to the play was my infatuation with the actor who plays Feste. I’m only, like, 5% smitten, okay? 10% at the most.) (I’m lying to myself. It’s 100%.)