I read this two days ago and decided to sit on it for a while because a.) for a blog dedicated to independent theatre, we’ve been talking about the Guthrie a lot lately, and b.) it was so ridiculous that I needed 48 hours to get over the mild heart attack I had after reading it.

To the left, you’ll see a photo of Andrew Wade. Wade is the voice and language coach for the Guthrie’s current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the most recent Star Tribune/Guthrie Theater love fest, Wade offered some insight on how best to tackle The Bard’s work.

In Shakespeare, Wade said, there’s a great temptation to make it make sense, to make it sound like chatter at Starbucks. An actor has to rely on Shakespeare’s language being greater than the sum of its lines. “There is so much in the music of it,” Wade said. “You can trust it to make sense.”

Thank god someone was around to help the actors resist the urge to make Shakespeare make sense. Everyone knows that Shakespeare is at its best when you can turn to the person next to you and whisper “Excuse me. Do you know what the fuck is going on?”

To say that you can just trust Shakespeare to make sense is to admit that you are completely out of touch with the average Joe. My plumber is probably not going to understand most of Hamlet without a lot of help. And chances are he’s not going to like it unless the actors make it feel a little more like chatter at Starbuck’s, and a little less like a 400 year old play.

But kudos to the Guthrie and to Wade. The show looks very expensive…and let’s face it, that’s the only thing the Guthrie crowd really needs to understand.