“Boundless as the Sea” is a new piece created for Cunard cruises by Owen Horsley from Shakespearean love scenes, including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, Troilus and Cressida, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Several of my friends are back to taking cruises now that Covid appears manageable. Today’s post is about some new entertainment offerings on cruises. I enjoyed reading about them about as they bring to mind the “Royal Viking Singers and Dancers!” that our family got such a kick out of on our one cruise, 1990.
Siobhan Burke reported in January at the New York Times about a very modern dance group taking to the high seas. And Emma Powell had a Daily Mail story about Cunard Lines tapping the Bard.
Burke wrote, “On a late-summer night, three choreographers greeted friends at the New York opening of their latest show, exchanging hugs and chatting through masks over the blare of pop music. Neon projections in the theater, a nightclub-like space called the Red Room, exclaimed ‘Welcome to the Show!!’ Cocktail servers wove efficiently through the crowd with trays of drinks, as nimble as the dancers who would soon take the stage.
“It could have been one of the many clubs or theater spaces where the choreographers — Ani Taj, Sam Pinkleton and Sunny Min-Sook Hitt — had performed and presented their work over the past decade, as members of the Dance Cartel, a group founded by Taj in 2012 and known for its exuberant, open-to-all, party-meets-performance live events.
“But a few features set this space apart: the screen outside the entrance beckoning ‘Sail Into Something Spectacular’; the fluorescent signs reading ‘PORT’ and STARBOARD to mark stage left and stage right; the enormous pink inflatable whale onstage.
“How had the artists landed here, on a 2,770-passenger luxury cruise ship, which on this particular night was docked in Manhattan, en route to Miami? Among the three of them, they have choreographed for Broadway, television, opera, music videos, museums and other arenas. But as Taj said when they recently got together for a video interview, a foray into cruise ship entertainment was ‘not something any of us expected to be on the timeline of our careers.’
“ ‘We definitely had a moment of: A cruise ship — did they get the right people?’ Pinkleton said, recalling his confusion when he and Taj, who are represented by ICM Partners, were invited by their agents to pitch a show to Virgin Voyages, a new adults-only cruise line founded by the British billionaire Richard Branson. ‘I think we had a very narrow idea of what making a show for a ship would mean.’ …
“Dance shows on cruise ships typically take place on proscenium stages, for seated, stationary audiences. … In the group’s first and signature work, ‘OntheFloor, which Taj and Pinkleton directed, dancers maneuver around and among a standing audience, their irrepressible energy an invitation to join in. …
“Still, she and Pinkleton answered the call for a pitch.
“We said, ‘Yeah, we’ll accept that challenge and come up with something that surely won’t fly,” ‘ Taj said.
“ ‘We were like, “This seems like a fun exercise,” ‘ Pinkleton added, ‘and dared ourselves to present a pretty authentic version of what we would like to make.’
“That exercise, which began in 2017, has now become a full-fledged, hourlong production aboard the Scarlet Lady, the first Virgin ship to set sail for paying customers.”
Funny article. See it at the Times, here.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reports, “The Royal Shakespeare Company has teamed up with British cruise line Cunard to take the Bard’s work out to sea as part of a three-year partnership.
“Voyagers on the Queen Mary 2 will be able to enjoy several pieces during transatlantic crossings from Southampton or explorations around Norway’s fjords.
“One such performance is ‘Boundless as the Sea,’ a brand new piece created by Owen Horsley from Shakespeare’s iconic love scenes including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, The Winter’s Tale, Troilus and Cressida and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. …
“Workshops will be on offer as well as events ‘where the actors will perform their personal favorite sonnets and speeches, and answer questions from the audience.’
“The Queen Mary 2 will also host touring exhibition, ‘Digital Diorama: An Augmented Journey Through Shakespeare’s Stratford,’ with some of the RSC’s most popular productions including Hamlet, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor and As You Like It screened in the on board cinema. … The first voyages will run from May 29 until August 12 and then again from September 15 to November 13.”
More at the Daily Mail, here.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
There is a dinner show on a ship, The Spirit of Philadelphia, which is a fun evening, cruising down the Delaware and back again and watching a musical number. I’ve been on it several times with various organizations who rent it out for the evening, and the musical fare is usually on a Western theme with cowboys and cowgirls strutting their stuff. Cruises aren’t my style, but I always enjoyed this.
That sounds like fun, Hannah. Thanks for the tip.