Shakespeare

[SimonNZ]

Learning only now that there was a film of Hamlet starring Ian McKellen...as Hamlet.

And that it screened for only one night in UK cinemas - last Feb 27. And seemingly isn't going to get a one-off screening out here.

This is frustrating and absurd - I kinda-but-not-really get the National Theatre one-offs, but couldn't a McKellen Hamlet have justified a wider release and made some money?

*sigh*

[San Antone]

Learning only now that there was a film of Hamlet starring Ian McKellen...as Hamlet.

Isn't he kind of old for the role?

[SimonNZ]

Isn't he kind of old for the role?

Older than his mother, even.

(checking: yup, 18 years older than Jenny Seagrove playing Gertrude)

But its an interesting idea because suspending disbelief is all just a question of degrees.

[ando]

A Series of Headaches is a video from the London Review of Books following printer Nick Hand as he prints a page from the magazine using methods as close as he can get to those used to print the First Folio of Shakespeare plays. The page selected is an old LRB article about the First Folio by Michael Dobson. The video is made in conjunction with Folio400, a website dedicated to the printing of the First Folio.

[ando]

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent Judi Dench, Brendan O'Hea (2023, Penguin)

I'm hoping there's an audio book with Dench narrating. Fun.

[SimonNZ]

I'm hoping there's an audio book with Dench narrating. Fun.

I heard Judi Dench asked why she doesn't read audiobooks and she said that even before her macular degeneration that wasn't the way her eyes "read" a text. That its an entirely different skillset being able to "see" the wider text on a first reading and anticipate the tone as opposed to learning lines the way she does.

[San Antone]

I'm hoping there's an audio book with Dench narrating. Fun.

I have been reading this and enjoying it very much.  Lots of great information about the plays, and of course funny stories about productions Ms Dench has been involved.

[Brian]

But its an interesting idea because suspending disbelief is all just a question of degrees.

I was just reading an interesting comment from the Globe Theatre production team that their position is explicitly anti-casting like as like, that they feel the plays can be thoughtfully interpreted with anyone performing as anyone. (The context was an all-women Richard III, which drew criticism not because of the women, but because the specific woman playing Richard didn't have a grotesque humpback!)

[(poco) Sforzando]

Older than his mother, even.

(checking: yup, 18 years older than Jenny Seagrove playing Gertrude)

But its an interesting idea because suspending disbelief is all just a question of degrees.

Sounds like a caricature of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe:

Her age, upon the date
Of his birth, was minus eight,
If she's seventeen, and he is five-and-twenty!

[Brian]

Sounds like a caricature of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe:

Her age, upon the date
Of his birth, was minus eight,
If she's seventeen, and he is five-and-twenty!

I think my mom stopped celebrating her "twenty-ninth birthday" when I turned twenty-one...

[ritter]

Reminds me of widespread criticism of a recording of La Traviata conducted by Mehta, form 1992. Violetta was the then 48-year-old Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Alfredo was the 65-year-old Alfredo Kraus, and Germont (Alfredo's father in the opera) was the 30-year-old Dmitri Hvorostovsky. They say that unfortunately all sounded their respective ages, which really challenged the suspension of disbelief.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I was just reading an interesting comment from the Globe Theatre production team that their position is explicitly anti-casting like as like, that they feel the plays can be thoughtfully interpreted with anyone performing as anyone. (The context was an all-women Richard III, which drew criticism not because of the women, but because the specific woman playing Richard didn't have a grotesque humpback!)

Since Richard likely had scoliosis or curvature of the spine, a humpback would not have worked either. Not that Shakespeare likely knew or cared.

But let's pursue this "anyone performing as anyone" notion a bit farther. Under this principle, we could have a young lady performing Lear, a thin young guy as Falstaff, a white man as Othello, a man or woman (obviously it doesn't matter) of 75 as Juliet, a teenage boy as Cleopatra (which in fact might have been done in his time; there's that line about "some squeaking Cleopatra boy"), etc.

And the argument that since Shakespeare had boys or young men playing women, so we can cast women as men, doesn't help either. Even today you never see all-male productions where the women are the young men Shakespeare imagined. (I once saw an all-male Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance as Olivia, and he's no spring chicken.) Shakespeare often plays on the notion that his audience was seeing physical males playing females. In As You Like It, for instance, the physical boy or young man playing the female part of Rosalind disguises "herself" as a boy, then pretends to be a girl, and in the epilogue acknowledges that "she" is actually a young male. This gender-blind stuff just doesn't work, and you might as well re-score the Beethoven symphonies for an orchestra of all-chromatic brass.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Reminds me of widespread criticism of a recording of La Traviata conducted by Mehta, form 1992. Violetta was the then 48-year-old Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Alfredo was the 65-year-old Alfredo Kraus, and Germont (Alfredo's father in the opera) was the 30-year-old Dmitri Hvorostovsky. They say that unfortunately all sounded their respective ages, which really challenged the suspension of disbelief.

But how old was Mehta?

[ritter]

Mehta was 56 I think, but AFAIK he did not do any singing on the set (I hope). As for Verdi's age when he composed the opera, that I am afraid is the area of expertise of anther GMGer, not mine... 

[(poco) Sforzando]

I was just reading an interesting comment from the Globe Theatre production team that their position is explicitly anti-casting like as like, that they feel the plays can be thoughtfully interpreted with anyone performing as anyone. (The context was an all-women Richard III, which drew criticism not because of the women, but because the specific woman playing Richard didn't have a grotesque humpback!)

You are now talking about the disability advocates, who take umbrage that able-bodied actors are playing disabled roles.

But the social justice warriors don't stop there. I've read an article where the author was outraged that Madame Butterfly was being cast as other than Asian. (It was not clear whether the soprano had to be Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc., but she had to be Asian.) Never mind that Puccini's heroine is just an Italian soprano in a kimono who has to overstride a huge Puccinian orchestra. So goodbye Renata Scotto, Victoria de los Angeles, Maria Callas, Leontyne Price, and all the other whites who have "appropriated" the part.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Mehta was 56 I think, but AFAIK he did not do any singing on the set (I hope). 

Unlike Toscanini in Bohème . . . .

[Todd]

But let's pursue this "anyone performing as anyone" notion a bit farther. Under this principle, we could have a young lady performing Lear, a thin young guy as Falstaff, a white man as Othello, a man or woman (obviously it doesn't matter) of 75 as Juliet, a teenage boy as Cleopatra (which in fact might have been done in his time; there's that line about "some squeaking Cleopatra boy"), etc.

Something of a reactionary take.  Who cares if race or gender or whatever is swapped?  If changes are forced, that is another matter, but if the changes are made for creative purposes, they may be worth a shot.  Queen Lear could conceivably be quite good with the right actress - sans makeup, even.  Hell, the main cast members could all be gender swapped.  White men playing Othello rather than white men in blackface probably wouldn't matter much.  (I'm pretty sure Olivier was white, but do correct me if I'm wrong on that.)  Also, a Latino could play Othello, and probably even, oh, maybe a Korean man.  An elderly, male Juliet could be hilarious, and I would not be a bit surprised if something like that has been attempted.  Most deviant casting choices would likely result in crap, but so what?  Play productions routinely use anachronistic stagings, or minimalist stagings, and sometimes such stagings work, sometimes not.  Shakespeare's plays will persevere irrespective of crappy performances, which no doubt vastly outnumber great ones.

Special interest groups that whine about underrepresentation can safely be disregarded entirely unless they supply the dough needed to put on the shows.

[Brian]

You are now talking about the disability advocates, who take umbrage that able-bodied actors are playing disabled roles.

Yes, that was the argument, that the actor who plays Richard III should be disabled. Never mind that the Richard in the play is mostly described as ugly and deformed, not physically impaired or incapable. Nor the reality that Richard merely had scoliosis. Nor the probability that he's been described in history and Shakespeare as ugly, warped, etc. for propagandistic reasons. Certainly not for disabled advocacy!

[(poco) Sforzando]

White men playing Othello rather than white men in blackface probably wouldn't matter much.

Olivier played the role in blackface, and in fact close to full-body makeup. Object if you like, but I have never seen an actor so fully realize the character. But when the composer Bright Sheng at U. of Michigan taught a course in Shakespeare vs. Verdi and showed portions of Olivier's film, outrage ensued and he was relieved of his teaching duties.

So my take is reactionary? So what. Hamlet was cast as female as early as Sarah Bernhardt. I've seen an all-female Othello with a gifted Filipina in the lead; it worked well enough except when the characters kept addressing each other as "my lord." I will prefer my Shakespeare with actors who embody the physical characteristics implied by the text. An elderly male Juliet would indeed be hilarious, but is the play a comedy? I'll prefer the young kids in the Zeffirelli film. Roger Allam was a terrific Falstaff in the Globe Theater DVD, but he was merely stout rather than the tub of grease Shakespeare created.

Part of the problem with casting Shakespeare is that his cast lists are overwhelmingly male, and women are restricted to the 2-3 female parts in each of the plays. But women want to play Shakespeare, and so we've had Glenda Jackson as Lear, Helen Mirren as Prospero, and no end of female Hamlets.

It's not an easy yes-or-no, and I have seen my share of what you are calling deviant casting. Some of it works, some doesn't. I don't want to see black or Asian actors excluded simply because Shakespeare didn't write for them. I don't want to see black actors restricted to playing Othello, though I objected to a production where Iago was also black, because that diluted the play's emphasis on Othello being a man of color who is isolated in a white world. When much younger, I saw a Lear with the Jewish actor Morris Carnovsky and the young black actress Ruby Dee as Cordelia, casting that was considered very radical in the mid-1960s. I remember it as a great production. So each case on its own, though when I hear of a female Lear or Hamlet I'm not likely to buy a ticket.

[Todd]

So my take is reactionary? So what.

That's the spirit.

It's not an easy yes-or-no

There's nothing hard here.  It's all make-believe.