Suppose, for whatever reason, your project is to inoculate a young person to the pleasures and thrills of Shakespeare, this is how to do it: First, minimize their exposure to the Bard until they hit puberty, maybe a few years more. Then, declare that they’re in for a special treat and show them those BBC television productions of Shakespeare’s plays from the 1970s and early 1980s. Watch their eyes, and you’ll see something die a little inside.
The thing with that notoriously uneven series – they filmed literally every play – is that each production featured some of Britain’s finest Shakespearean actors, all elegantly costumed, and yet most are the quintessence of high-brow artistic tedium. Largely shot on dimly lit, claustrophobic sets, the programs are, for the most part, gloomy and uninteresting. Introduce someone to Shakespeare this way, and you have done them wrong.
In my case, the damage was, mercifully, not permanent. The first one I saw was “The Comedy of Errors,” (to this day, the only one I’ve seen in its entirety) which featured The Who’s Roger Daltry as the goofy Dromio twins. He hasn’t performed Shakespeare since, for which there is good reason. I watched it in advance of playing one of the other twins for a high school production. Probably a bad choice. When one of the Bard’s comedies is in capable hands, it’s as laugh-out-loud hilarious as “The Big Bang Theory.”
To be fair, I’m sure my own acting made Daltry look like Laurence Olivier.
Years later, I would see a few clips from “Hamlet.” A theater instructor advised me to watch Derek Jacobi in a couple scenes. He’s great, of course. A lot of those actors they were serious heavyweights: John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Patrick Stewart, etc. Enormous talent all the way around, and yet trapped in a world of stifling tedium. British director Michael Bogdanov famously called the series “the greatest disservice to Shakespeare in the last 25 years.” Not all critics were as harsh, but most were unimpressed. It was the cultural equivalent of forcing viewers to eat their broccoli -- because it's good for you!
Every year, prior to visits to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, I devise an elaborate study plan for the plays. I’ve been dutifully checking off my “to read” list for “Cymbeline” the last few weeks, in anticipation of seeing it later this month. I’ve read the play itself once all the way through, and again in pieces. Also, essays by Harold Bloom, Marjorie Garber, Issac Asimov, the lengthy intros in the Pelican, New Cambridge and Arden editions. I get a little crazy about it.
Crazy enough, even, to include on my “to do” list a viewing of the BBC production of whatever play we plan to see. I don’t know why I even bother with it anymore, knowing that it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll actually watch it. That hasn’t happened since “Comedy of Errors” in the Reagan years.
In his endlessly useful book “The Rough Guide to Shakespeare,” Andrew Dickson observes that one of the curiosities about the BBC project was that the stuffy sensibility tended to work better with Shakespeare’s so-called “problem” comedies, and “Cymbeline” qualifies. So how bad could it be, with Helen Mirren as Imogen?
Well, I gave it a go, and thanks largely to Mirren, I lasted about 45 minutes. Here you have a play that is essentially a fairy tale dressed up as historical drama, but everyone in the BBC version takes the business way too seriously.
Take Iachimo, the rogue who bets Posthumous that he can seduce his wife Imogen. Bloom is on the mark when he suggests that Danny Kaye would have been ideal for this sort of thing. That I can see. But instead, Robert Lindsay is nearly as creepy as Jeremy Renner in “Dahmer.” That’s not to say he isn’t good – just close your eyes and listen to his commentary after he pops out of the trunk in Imogen’s bedroom; he speaks the language beautifully. But he’s in the wrong play. He’s playing Iago. Picture Danny Kaye as Iago, and you’ll understand how ridiculous it is.
Later, there’s a remarkable scene in which Imogen awakes next to the headless body of Cloten, who – being dressed in Posthumus’ clothing – is mistaken for her exiled husband. Mirren goes deep and dark, concluding the scene by repeatedly smearing blood on her face.
This 1982 production, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, raises a legitimate question: Did Shakespeare really intend “Cymbeline” to be taken so seriously? Perhaps. When I read the play the first time, the beheading of Cloten caught me off guard – a true WTF? moment. I describe it as a fairy tale, but I suppose one must remember that those old folk stories are full of gruesome violence, abuse and cruelty. Given the multiple plots that run through “Cymbeline,” a director could approach it any number of ways, but it seems to me that someone who wants to go deep and dark with a play like this would be well advised to keep his tongue firmly in cheek. Iachimo is no Iago, Imogen (though the most appealing character in the play) is no Rosiland, and Posthumus is certainly no Romeo.
I’m looking forward to seeing this in Ashland. I've avoided the reviews, but I’ve heard that the folks in Ashland basically play it like Disney, which strikes me as clever choice. Interestingly, a play that so far has been avoided by Hollywood goes before the cameras this month in New York with Ethan Hawke as Posthumus and Ed Harris in the title role. Michael Almereyda, who directed Hawke in his 2000 “Hamlet,” presides over the project, which reportedly will have “corrupt cops clash with a drug-dealing biker gang.” That might work. But probably not.
The thing with that notoriously uneven series – they filmed literally every play – is that each production featured some of Britain’s finest Shakespearean actors, all elegantly costumed, and yet most are the quintessence of high-brow artistic tedium. Largely shot on dimly lit, claustrophobic sets, the programs are, for the most part, gloomy and uninteresting. Introduce someone to Shakespeare this way, and you have done them wrong.
In my case, the damage was, mercifully, not permanent. The first one I saw was “The Comedy of Errors,” (to this day, the only one I’ve seen in its entirety) which featured The Who’s Roger Daltry as the goofy Dromio twins. He hasn’t performed Shakespeare since, for which there is good reason. I watched it in advance of playing one of the other twins for a high school production. Probably a bad choice. When one of the Bard’s comedies is in capable hands, it’s as laugh-out-loud hilarious as “The Big Bang Theory.”
To be fair, I’m sure my own acting made Daltry look like Laurence Olivier.
Years later, I would see a few clips from “Hamlet.” A theater instructor advised me to watch Derek Jacobi in a couple scenes. He’s great, of course. A lot of those actors they were serious heavyweights: John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Patrick Stewart, etc. Enormous talent all the way around, and yet trapped in a world of stifling tedium. British director Michael Bogdanov famously called the series “the greatest disservice to Shakespeare in the last 25 years.” Not all critics were as harsh, but most were unimpressed. It was the cultural equivalent of forcing viewers to eat their broccoli -- because it's good for you!
Every year, prior to visits to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, I devise an elaborate study plan for the plays. I’ve been dutifully checking off my “to read” list for “Cymbeline” the last few weeks, in anticipation of seeing it later this month. I’ve read the play itself once all the way through, and again in pieces. Also, essays by Harold Bloom, Marjorie Garber, Issac Asimov, the lengthy intros in the Pelican, New Cambridge and Arden editions. I get a little crazy about it.
Crazy enough, even, to include on my “to do” list a viewing of the BBC production of whatever play we plan to see. I don’t know why I even bother with it anymore, knowing that it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll actually watch it. That hasn’t happened since “Comedy of Errors” in the Reagan years.
In his endlessly useful book “The Rough Guide to Shakespeare,” Andrew Dickson observes that one of the curiosities about the BBC project was that the stuffy sensibility tended to work better with Shakespeare’s so-called “problem” comedies, and “Cymbeline” qualifies. So how bad could it be, with Helen Mirren as Imogen?
Well, I gave it a go, and thanks largely to Mirren, I lasted about 45 minutes. Here you have a play that is essentially a fairy tale dressed up as historical drama, but everyone in the BBC version takes the business way too seriously.
Take Iachimo, the rogue who bets Posthumous that he can seduce his wife Imogen. Bloom is on the mark when he suggests that Danny Kaye would have been ideal for this sort of thing. That I can see. But instead, Robert Lindsay is nearly as creepy as Jeremy Renner in “Dahmer.” That’s not to say he isn’t good – just close your eyes and listen to his commentary after he pops out of the trunk in Imogen’s bedroom; he speaks the language beautifully. But he’s in the wrong play. He’s playing Iago. Picture Danny Kaye as Iago, and you’ll understand how ridiculous it is.
Later, there’s a remarkable scene in which Imogen awakes next to the headless body of Cloten, who – being dressed in Posthumus’ clothing – is mistaken for her exiled husband. Mirren goes deep and dark, concluding the scene by repeatedly smearing blood on her face.
This 1982 production, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, raises a legitimate question: Did Shakespeare really intend “Cymbeline” to be taken so seriously? Perhaps. When I read the play the first time, the beheading of Cloten caught me off guard – a true WTF? moment. I describe it as a fairy tale, but I suppose one must remember that those old folk stories are full of gruesome violence, abuse and cruelty. Given the multiple plots that run through “Cymbeline,” a director could approach it any number of ways, but it seems to me that someone who wants to go deep and dark with a play like this would be well advised to keep his tongue firmly in cheek. Iachimo is no Iago, Imogen (though the most appealing character in the play) is no Rosiland, and Posthumus is certainly no Romeo.
I’m looking forward to seeing this in Ashland. I've avoided the reviews, but I’ve heard that the folks in Ashland basically play it like Disney, which strikes me as clever choice. Interestingly, a play that so far has been avoided by Hollywood goes before the cameras this month in New York with Ethan Hawke as Posthumus and Ed Harris in the title role. Michael Almereyda, who directed Hawke in his 2000 “Hamlet,” presides over the project, which reportedly will have “corrupt cops clash with a drug-dealing biker gang.” That might work. But probably not.
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