Shakespeare

[SimonNZ]

I have always thought that the most original approach to Shakespeare would be to present his characters and situations honestly and without gimmicks, rewriting, translations, transpositions, and so forth.

Saw a local production of Richard III earlier this year I expected to be a chore, but who took this approach and it was one of the best theatre experiences I'd had in a good long while. An empty stage apart from a checkerboard floor, one single all-purpose rectangular block the size of a bed or sofa, and photographs projected on to the back of the stage depicting a courtyard garden or a cell in the tower or field (such an obvious, simple idea, I'm surprised I haven't seen it done before)...everything else depended on the actors to keep the audience awake. Then I was stunned to realise it was going to be full text - including all the Margaret stuff I feel is at the very heart of the play but which are always the first parts cut.

A immediate, heartfelt, standing, stomping, ovation from everyone in the audience at the end.


edit: in other news: I'm off to Fassbender's Macbeth in a couple of hours

[Gurn Blanston]

I have always thought that the most original approach to Shakespeare would be to present his characters and situations honestly and without gimmicks, rewriting, translations, transpositions, and so forth.

That's the way I feel about opera, precisely. I don't feel the groundswell of love for that, though...

[(poco) Sforzando]

edit: in other news: I'm off to Fassbender's Macbeth in a couple of hours

That reaches us on December 4. Please report. Marion Cotillard as Lady M. sounds très interresant.

[SimonNZ]

That reaches us on December 4. Please report. Marion Cotillard as Lady M. sounds très interresant.

Well, then. Where to begin?

I already knew from the Sight and Sound review that the film was to open with the Macbeths burying their young and only child and that a great part of their unfolding motivation was to be the emotional exhaustion or emptiness they feel following this, and their childlessness would be a source of resentment against the heirs of the luckier families constantly around them. And its an idea that works well most of the time with Fassbender initially following his assigned destiny as though he no longer has any reason not to, Cotillard half distracted by the memories she's seeing in the middle distance. So far so good if they'd just left that as an undercurrent, but to make a meal of this idea the scriptwriters quickly start to play fast and loose with their source play.

For a start there's the cuts. I thought the Zeferelli Taming Of The Shrew would never be beaten for the lowest percentage of text used, but I thought wrong. And its not just the usual missing scenes, though some of those are remarkable (no knocking at the gate, no sleepwalking, no "double, double toil and trouble", no Macduff family scene with the murderers), but the hopscotching through the text in the existing scenes that its remarkable when someone actually says five or six lines in a row. All this accommodates a leisurely pace in the speech of the actors, closer to what we would now perceive as a normal talking speed, and in some ways its a relief not to hear the standard double-quick prattle, but so much time that could be given over to even this is used for battle sequences, landscape shots (admittedly beautiful), and all manner of general mood-setting.

And then there's the changes, for example: "out damn spot" is delivered, divorced from doctors etc, to the apparition of Lady Macbeth's pox-ridden child. Macduff's family are burned at the stake in front of LM, which adds to her crack-up. Malcolm discovers Macbeth with bloody daggers beside the dead Duncan and runs away to England without saying a word. And Birnam Wood doesn't move - this one caught me off guard, until I realised they were suddenly fighting in front of burning trees, and its "moving" as embers, riiiight, which means we can't have the command to cut down trees nor the shock news report.

With a lesser cast of actors this would have been a train wreck of a film, but the half-dozen principles and particularly the two leads transcend the misguided interpretation and made it for me an intriguing missed opportunity, with plenty of fine if snipped moments ("tomorrow and tomorrow" was I thought quite effective as whispered into the ear of LM as Macbeth holds her lifeless body in his arms) and to someone unfamiliar with the play and not constantly making mental comparisons and corrections it might well seem superb.

[(poco) Sforzando]

With a lesser cast of actors this would have been a train wreck of a film, but the half-dozen principles and particularly the two leads transcend the misguided interpretation and made it for me an intriguing missed opportunity, with plenty of fine if snipped moments ("tomorrow and tomorrow" was I thought quite effective as whispered into the ear of LM as Macbeth holds her lifeless body in his arms) and to someone unfamiliar with the play and not constantly making mental comparisons and corrections it might well seem superb.

At least they didn't bring in Mary Queen of Scots.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Hamlet is making his friends swear not to reveal anything they have seen.

"But come;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,
With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,'
Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me: this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear."

[SimonNZ]

At least they didn't bring in Mary Queen of Scots.

You've seen this done?

There's actually a bit right at the end which I'm of two minds about: Fleance is shown on the battlefield picking up Macbeth's sword and running away, Malcolm is shown somehow realising that he needs to kill Fleance and leaving in seeming pursuit with his sword.

It does highlight the "yeah, what did happen to Fleance and that prophesy?" thing (usually resolved by having him turn up silently as Malcom's BFF at the end). And we no longer know the way the first audiences might have that James I was supposedly descended from Banqo.

But the film seems to be suggesting that Fleance will become a regicide of a rightful king, just like Macbeth.

(hope the rest of my review didn't put you off ultimately seeing it - just that people might appreciate being forewarned. Should have realised that being a Harvey Weinstein production...)

[(poco) Sforzando]

You've seen this done?

It was an oblique reference to Mr. Smith's idea of Shakespeare.

[SimonNZ]

It was an oblique reference to Mr. Smith's idea of Shakespeare.

Sorry, but you've lost me...

[(poco) Sforzando]

Sorry, but you've lost me...

Post 167. But I really don't want to reopen this can of worms. Mr. Smith has his way of seeing Shakespeare, and I have mine. (I could paraphrase Landowska on playing Bach, but that would be snide.)

[SimonNZ]

Post 167. But I really don't want to reopen this can of worms. Mr. Smith has his way of seeing Shakespeare, and I have mine. (I could paraphrase Landowska on playing Bach, but that would be snide.)

Erm, okay. Well, I'll be interested in your report, and those of others here, if and when they see the film.

Marion Cottilard really does well, despite the distorted play she's given to work with. I particularly admired that she did the banquet scene as commanding and unfaltingly regal, instead of the more familiar nervous laughter and embarrased looks and improvisation. And of course she's not too hard on the eye.

[lisa needs braces]

The one Shakespeare passage I've comitted to memory...mainly due to this scene from an English film (Withnail & I):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPNA_BoCFPs

[SimonNZ]

^Probably the fiercest argument I've had over a movie was with a friend discussing that scene about two decades ago. He said it proved Withnail was just as great an actor as Marwood (the "I" character) and getting a role, as Marwood had, was mere chance or politics. I argued that Withnail was a poor actor as evidenced by his lousy and unconvincing performance with the lout at the bar and here his only audience were uncritical zoo animals, whereas Marwood had to (successfully) act his way out of the very real possibility of being buggered by Uncle Monty.

[jochanaan]

I have always thought that the most original approach to Shakespeare would be to present his characters and situations honestly and without gimmicks, rewriting, translations, transpositions, and so forth.

My, my, what a radical approach!  Doing it as written!

I have read about some opera stagings in which the instruments were period, the singers HIP, but the production was completely modernized.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Brian, have you seen these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-bJjrVOtI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcY4I21EvOU

[Brian]

Brian, have you seen these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-bJjrVOtI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcY4I21EvOU

Not yet, but I will have to make time for them soon - at Rice I did see a number of Shakespeare plays put on by the dorms themselves (not even the official theatre departments), and was always impressed at how many cast members really 'got' Shakespearean diction and were able to communicate meaningfully, without rushing or doing slapsticky hand-gesture enactments of what every double-entendre means. Not everyone, of course. I think a lunk from the swim team was Caliban in The Tempest and that was kinda weird. (I was surprised when he turned up in the villain poll because in that interpretation, he was just a big dumb guy who wants to be loved.) But the leads spoke their lines naturally and well, and while I was there, the student directors never made "look at me aren't I clever" decisions about changing the setting/time/language.

[(poco) Sforzando]

without rushing or doing slapsticky hand-gesture enactments of what every double-entendre means.

Ah yes. The old (and I do mean old) point-to-my-crotch bit every time there's a sex joke.

I think a lunk from the swim team was Caliban in The Tempest and that was kinda weird. (I was surprised when he turned up in the villain poll because in that interpretation, he was just a big dumb guy who wants to be loved.)

Aw. But that doesn't quite square with the Caliban of the play, does it, who attempted to rape Miranda and spends most of his time in an ineffectual plot to overthrow Prospero. But Caliban is one of the more difficult characters to know what to do with these days. Clearly Shakespeare intended him to appear deformed, even subhuman, smelling and looking like a fish at least in the eyes of the clowns, and he seems to encompass all of man's brutish earth and water instincts, in contrast to Ariel's fire and air (a bit like the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, or the Morlocks and the Eloy from Wells's The Time Machine). On the other hand, Caliban has the legitimate case that the island actually belongs to him, and Prospero is this European usurper who has subjugated him and forced him into slavery (though at first Prospero seems to have been very affectionate towards the young monster, and things might gone better with Caliban had he not tried to ravish Miranda). At the same time, Caliban is not purely brutish, and no character in the play shows such an innate sensitivity to the island's natural music:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

So what do we do with Caliban? One college production I saw just decided to make him a very handsome young man, a kind of noble savage, which may be what your young lunk tried to do. Then the last staging I saw took the more traditional approach, but portrayed Ariel as a shrieking screaming banshee. When seeing Shakespeare, one can never win.

But the leads spoke their lines naturally and well, and while I was there, the student directors never made "look at me aren't I clever" decisions about changing the setting/time/language.

I tend to find these days that the less pretentious college and community theaters generally put on better Shakespeare than the so-called professional directors, whose main motivation seems to be "how can I fuck it up this time?"

[Karl Henning]

If you think you need to "make it interesting," you're failing to perceive the interest inherent in the work.

[kishnevi]

I actually found it a dreadful bore, but you might find the Metropolitan Opera pastiche The Enchanted Island worth one viewing, at least. It mixes in Midsummer Night's Dream into The Tempest, but uses the approach of viewing Prospero as not really such a nice guy, so  Caliban and Sycorax (alive and scheming in this version) come off rather sympathetic characters.
This link has pictures including one of Luca Pisaroni in full monster makeup.
https://robertarood.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-enchanted-island-going-for-baroque/


If the clips intrigue, the full thing is available on DVD, but I don't really suggest an actual purchase.

[Brian]

I actually found it a dreadful bore, but you might find the Metropolitan Opera pastiche The Enchanted Island worth one viewing, at least. It mixes in Midsummer Night's Dream into The Tempest,

And what music/musicians does it mix together?