Literary Me

I've gone on a Shakespeare kick while knitting presents. We watched Shakespeare in Love the other night, which has some of the best costumes in it. I love Ben Afl*ck in it--a minor role, but he plays it really nicely as someone with major presence but only on the periphery of this story.

Anyway, after watching that I loaded up on Shakespeare. Yesterday I watched Twelfth Night and Love's Labour's Lost. Twelfth Night is, in my opinion, much the better play. How can you not adore a play with a line about "Patience on a Monument?"  But I may be prejudiced by the versions I watched yesterday. Twelfth Night was in a relatively timeless setting--some European location, sometime before 1900, you know the type. But Love's Labour's Lost was set in 1939 and turned into a musical--which could have been a brilliant move, if it weren't for the shoddy casting and abysmal choreography and generally painful singing.

Not every actor can pull off Shakespeare. And while Nathan L*ne makes a wonderful clown, because he is wonderful in anything, shrill American accents do nothing for already difficult to understand Shakespearean English. Some of the cast was guilty of rushing the dialogue and at times I had to wonder if they had a clue what they were saying. (S*lverstone was particularly bad in this regard. She was fun in Clueless, but should never be allowed to perform Shakespeare.)

And then there was the singing and dancing. Ye gods, it was bad. The lone exception: D*nzel W*shington has a pleasant voice and is a graceful dancer. I would venture to guess that he has taken lessons at some point. But the other men . . . were no Fred Astaires (even as singers, and Fred Astaire was not exactly the world's finest voice). As for the women (*shudder*) I cringed every time they opened their mouths--except, of course, for Geraldine McEwan, who was wonderful as always. The actress playing Rosaline wasn't completely awful.

The thing is, I love 1950s musicals. And even if I didn't, I could appreciate the technical mastery the actors showed in their singing and dancing. They worked at it, they took classes, being able to do it and well was part of their job. You didn't wince every time they tried to sing, or look away from the world's most wooden attempts at dancing. If Branagh* (the director) was trying for a spoof, he missed badly. If he was seriously trying to make a musical, he should fire his casting director. (I think he cast it himself.)

Eh. Apparently I really disliked it. Pity, because it's a great play. Twelfth Night (directed by Trevor Nunn) really was lovely, though. Where does Helena B-C get all that hair? Goodness. Also, Viola and Sebastian looked eerily alike--amazing.

Today I think I'll queue up Henry V, and either MacBeth or As You Like It, depending on my mood. I'm a little worried that my knitting will get very, very tight if I knit while watching people mutter about not being able to get their hands clean.

*For the record, on Branagh: I loved Much Ado and could watch it a million times, I think Henry V is generally successful, and I think he should be made to suffer for Hamlet. No play deserves that sort of mistreatment, but especially  not Hamlet. Yes, I even prefer Mel Gibson's version. Olivier is still the best (not perfect, but the best performance).

Comments

[Shelley]

Ditto on Mel's Hamlet -- the High Octane Hamlet, my husband calls it. Branagh's was a yawn.