Entertainment For Lively Minds
Dr.Hamlet?
Posted by Doug B on 26 December 2009 - 1:08pm.
Has anyone any knowledge about the production of Hamlet being showed later on the telly? I believe is has "modern" touches that always put me off a bit. Has anyone seen it in the theatre?
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BBC Learing Zone
I saw the BBC Learning Zone preview with cast members explaining their roles as well as discussing Shakespeare. It looks genuinely tremendous and Tennant doesn't do all the Dr Who facial ticks.
You can have a butcher's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/hamlet/
Front Row review
It featured a few nights ago on Radio 4's Front Row and they think it is pretty damn good, especially Tennant's interpretation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pbsgx
It's the first review in the programme.
It is based on a RSC stage production
that was a huge critical and audience success. Worth seeing I think.
Saw it at Stratford with Tennant
and in London without (when his back went). Really good production, really good cast. Genuinely not to be missed.
There aren't that many "modern" touches beyond costume and set design (and as foreshadowed in the sweary podcast, the context of the language is all Elizabethan).
I saw Ian Charleson play the role of Hamlet...
at the Olivier Theatre in 1989. The dramatic tragedy was made almost unbearably poignant by a real life tragedy: Charleson was dying of AIDS. The 'to be or not to be' soliloquy was almost too much to bear... I remember several audience members were in tears. He was absolutely magnificent and I honestly have no idea how he managed it. Quite extraordinary. He died eight weeks after his last performance.
"Fool for Love"
Saw the 1984 production at the National of the Sam Shephard play, "Fool For Love" with Ian Charleson and Julie Walters - absolutely riveting. The whole production crackled with a violent energy which still stays with me.
David Tennant is too old!
Most of the actors playing Hamlet are far too old these days. There seems to be an unwritten rule that no one can be cast in the role until they have "made it" and are a name actor. But the part needs someone not older than 25 in my opinion.
Other than that, the production was good. Just marred by the fact that we had an actor getting on for forty running around acting like an adolescent and with a mum who didn't look much older than him.
It's by that Shakespeare bloke everyone likes.
Load of old wank.
Have the courage to stand up and say so. Wank. All of it.
And David Tennant needs to get a few good chip suppers inside him. He's thinner than piss on a hot rock.
And while we're at it...
The Beatles were over-rated too.
Old?
Undoubtedly, but as for the rest, what can I say? Ah, yes! - 'I was searching for a fool when I found you' (As You Like It).
You'll likely be unwittingly quoting a word or a phrase created by that Shakespeare bloke at some point today...
On quoting Shakespeare
Bernard Levin had this to say:
All well and good.. (probably another one..)
But what about the considerably more Shakespeareisms which died on their arses and exist only in his work to make the reader look and think "eh"?
It wasn't written to be read
and 90% of it makes sense in performance, if performed well.
Give the guy a break, Lenny
What other source, with the exception of the multi-authored Bible, has given so much to the language?
If being taught the plays at school put you off try the sonnets. http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/ Read one individually, then read again, then try it out loud and repeat until you're sure you have the sense of it. You must be academically able to qualify as a dentist so this shouldn't be a challenge; if you're dead to the poetry then no-one can help you. It isn't all easy, but that's why even the lightest stretches of Shakespeare reward close study.
Try Sonnet number 1 http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonn01.htm , and the next time a patient is in your chair who requires treatment because despite previous warnings they continue to stuff their face with sugar you can mutter, 'Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel'.
The additional pun of 'sweet' in the sense of confectionary will enhance the quotation.
I can't pretend that I know this line before I started writing this post , but that's what happens with Shakespeare. Wherever you look there is a phrase or insight which is relevant to your situation. I was not in the least surprised than in the space of 14 lines Shakespeare could provide me with a perfect quote to write in here in the poem which I only read because it is the very first one in the collection.
If Shakespeare is 'Wank. All of it.' then I'd be curious to know who does live up to your exacting cultural standards.
If I came up with a post..
Which had to be read, then re-read, then read once again just to make sure, I'd be horrified at my lack of clarity.
Particularly when it meant "You're your own worst enemy, Miss Jones"
I'm a scientist and not a man of literature. A phillistine to the eyes of many. I've been to many an RSC production with friends and have, each time, fidgeted my way through a couple of hours' worth of thespian expostulation. One one occasion having to leave early because the accutely annoying bearded man behind me kept yelling "HOHOHAHAHOHO" in my ear each time a "funny" bit happened. Just so everyone else around him would know that he was a scholar of the Bard and knew where the "funny" bits were.
I have a Shakespeare sonnet on the wall in the bedroom. I look at it most days and read bits of it. I'd much prefer it to be Ozymandius but my wife wouldn't let that be read out at our wedding.
So. My experiences of Will t'Bard have been both performed and written. And they just don't twang my wire.
Is all Shakespeare old wank? According to the sample so far conducted, and applying my own criteria of wankness, yes it is.
But that is, of course, just my opinion. Others will disagree with it.
The 'funny' bits
Fair dos, the comic scenes haven't lasted well, but very little humour from 40 years ago has, let alone 400. I remember a school trip to Stratford to see Twelfth Night which we were studying for O level. Our teacher had explained in the classroom that the following exchange was funny, because teachers had been telling us for centuries that it is funny:
It's rib-cracking stuff, isn't it?
When the lines came around we howled with sarcastic laughter, and earned frowns from those around us, particularly from those who wanted to laugh to demonstrate their erudition, and took exception to being pre-empted by up bunch of piss-taking schoolkids.
I'm not surprised that your wife didn't want Ozymandius (sic) read at her wedding. 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair' doesn't really set a nuptial tone.
Man of science
Lenny, you write as though science and literature are mutually exclusive. The thread on the greatest piece of TV featuring Jacob Bronowski is but one example of a scientist also being a man of letters.
I have some sympathy with this.
1) Shakespeare can be impenetrable: but not to his original audience, and I'm sure he didn't intend to be vexing schoolkids and unwilling theatre goers 400 years in the future.
2) Tiresome thespian expostulation: Yep. But blame the interpreter not the author.
3) Annoying bearded man: there's a lot of it about, especially in Stratford. I've seen more really excellent productions of Shakespeare outside of the RST / Swan than inside it. And it's not Shakespeare fault, really. There's a load of wank talked about Shakespeare - there's a whole industry based on it - I find that objectionable, but it really isn't Will's fault.
4) And of course you are entitled to your opinion. You've obviously thought about it at length & any amount of discussion is unlikely to move you. Fair do's.
The upper-middle classes and the academics don't exclusively own Shakespeare, and we shouldn't let them believe that they do (hello again guffawing beardy man). That's why it is important to keep his work alive. He really does still have much to teach us about ourselves.
Thinking back..
Polanski's Macbeth was really very good and did make a lot more sense to me. And, for all my bleating, Bill did come up with some classic storylines which, when rewritten and modernised to appeal to the gauche ear (that'll be mine) make for some fine work.
Why the modern dress?
I just don't understand the conceit of the players in modern dinner suits speaking Elizabethan language - just seems daft to me, however brilliant the rest of it.
Shakespeare rocks, dude
But why not?
I'm not saying we should all embrace Shakespeare in DMs in a university studio space, but the BBC/ RSC production use of modern dress and props doesn't detract a single iota from the performance - especially given the more modern phrasing of lines by one and all concerned.
I thought it was brilliant and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Would you
be ok with the language being modernised then so that it was more accessible to modern youth as well?
Have always been in two minds about the fellow myself but have always thought that he was adored by a certain sort of language snob who loved to appear cleverer then others.
The Morrissey of his day IMHO.
human nature
is the same in any age and nation. That is why yer man still resonanates. As to modern dress, what's wrong with that? Most people don't object to songs being covered/rearranged as long as the new setting comes off.
Actually, if we're talking about this era of plays and timeless themes, I highly recommend The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, who was a contemporary of our Will. A comedy about con-artists that pokes fun at the morals of the middle classes and what we would call fundamental Christians. It IS still genuinely funny and really does illustrate that bitingly bitter satire did not originate in the 1960s
A good friend of mine
was DP on the Tennant Hamlet. Shot in some derelict convent in Mill Hill, IIRC.
Hamlet, boring?
We had it on. I found it incredibly boring, such as I've never found the Dane to be before. Kenneth Branagh's film version, which was just as long, manages to use more locations, have better casting (Helena Bonham Carter as Ophelia was inspired) and a pertubed sense of unease that just didn't register with the new Tennant version. Even the usually scene with the players has deeper subtexts and an uneasy nuance to it. In this version the actors all looked like they'd rather be watching test cricket.
So we turned it off. 2 hours in.
If anyone liked it, great, but it genuinely bored me. Sorry.
Mel
I liked ol' Mel G as Hamlet in Zeffirelli's film. He's all manic and Lethal Weapony. And the Ethan Hawke film was brill. Not so much Ethan himself, but the film. And Bill Murray as Polonius.
For the record
Hamlet, like Leontes, is thirty years old. There is textual evidence in both plays.
Sorry, that's a reply to something up a bit.