Romeo and Juliet Part 1 - Sullivan

Yes! Now we’re in to the good stuff! Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s great plays, a true classic. It has been filmed many times and adapted to many different forms, including cartoons, ballets, and Broadway musicals. 

Only one of these is available to stream on Amazon Prime. It was filmed in 1982 by an operation called “Bard Productions, LLC” for the Shakespeare Video Society. It stars Alex Hyde-White as Romeo, Blanche Baker as Juliet, and Esther Rolle as the Nurse. 

The entire play (except possibly Friar Lawrence’s cell and the cemetery) is shot on one set, dressed as a marketplace, or an orchard, or Capulet's home, etc. The costumes appear to be a 1980s take on what Elizabethan Englishmen would have expected Italians to wear. The men are all wearing skin-tight leggings with contrasting codpieces that I have to mention because I found them very distracting (Dude! Put it away already! Get some pants, or maybe a kilt or something. Maybe a longer shirt!). Perhaps the ladies will appreciate it more than I did.

At the time this was made, Esther Rolle was probably the biggest name on the cast list due to her work on TV sitcoms. I liked her as the Nurse. The role appears to have been a little bit of a challenge for her, but her comic acting ability still shows through. Unfortunately she’s almost always stuck in scenes with Blanche Baker as Juliet. Baker seems to have learned her lines a few minutes before filming. Phonetically. Her Juliet is blank - expressionless - trancelike. She is so boring to watch, I had to start entertaining myself by watching for the shadow of the boom mic at the top of the screen. 

The redeeming star of this production is Dan Hamilton as Mercutio. I tend to think of Mercutio as a blowhard added for comic relief who gets one good speech and then dies. Dan Hamilton’s Mercutio is way more than this. There’s a deep backstory to this Mercutio. This Mercutio is a guy who’s been hurt by love. He’s angry, he’s itching for a fight, and he can’t help but use his natural charm and wit to diffuse what’s seething inside him. Your typical Mercutio steals a scene from Romeo. This Mercutio steals the entire production. 

Since this is the first Romeo and Juliet I’ve watched for this project, it is, by default, the best so far. I expect it to sink pretty quickly.

Here’s the ranking:

1: Dir. Larry Sullivan. Perf. Alex Hyde-White, Blanche Baker, and Dan Hamilton. Shakespeare Video Society, 1982. Amazon.com, 15 AUG 2013.

Love's Labour's Lost Part 2 - Branaugh

Ever wonder what it would have been like if, instead of writing for the London stage in the late 1500s/early 1600s, Shakespeare had been writing musicals in the 1930s? Me neither. But one man has chosen to answer this question: Kenneth Branaugh.

Usually Branaugh’s approach to Shakespeare (and yes, I’ll get to his Henry V and Hamlet in due course) is fairly conventional. He’s just not a big risk-taker. So it’s a bit of a surprise that he would take the leap to make a Shakespeare Musical. And he mostly hired the right cast: Alicia Silverstone makes a great princess, Richard Briars has to be in all Branaugh’s Shakespeare movies (I think there’s a contract or something), and if you’re doing a musical, you want to hire Nathan Lane. Lane would make an awesome Don Adriano, but that role inexplicably went to Timothy Spall, who you’ll recognize as Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter movies. Nathan Lane ends up playing Costard, who is morphed from a country bumpkin (probably what Shakespeare meant by “clown”) to an obnoxious travelling vaudevillian.

Here are some quick notes I made while I was watching this:

• Branaugh is getting a little long in the tooth to play a romantic lead.
• Alicia Silverstone has an amazingly expressive face, and appears to understand what she’s saying (not a given in Shakespeare movies!).
• Dear Mr. Spall: TURN IT DOWN!
• Cut the “I Get a Kick Out of You” number.
• Cut the synchronized swimming number.
• Richard Clifford is a great Boyet. Give us more Boyet!
• It would be interesting to see what Baz Lurhman would have done with this.

If I had seen this in the theater, I would have been disappointed by the absence of The Pagent of the Nine Worthies scene. Since that’s usually the best part of the play, I’m glad they included it in the bonus features. This cast actually didn’t do this scene very well, so I understand why most of it was cut, but I would rather they had reshot it with some better ideas. This might be all the proof you need that comedy is actually harder than tragedy.

It’s one of Shakespeare’s comedies: It’s not that good to begin with, so while you could make it awesome, you can’t really ruin it.

Love's Labour's Lost Part 1 - Moshinsky

I found two versions of Love’s Labour’s Lost were available to me. This post is about the 1985 BBC/Time Life production directed by Elijah Moshinsky.

The play is one of Shakespeare’s Stupid Comedies. The Idiotic King of Navarre decides to take three years off from being king (I guess Navarre pretty much runs itself) to study with three of his friends. In order to concentrate on their studies, they will eat very little, sleep very little, and stay away from women. Somehow this moron has forgotten that a Princess is due to arrive on an official visit, and that she is a woman. The four friends immediately have to break their agreement, meet the princess and her ladies, and fall madly in love. Idiotic comedy ensues, and we’re supposed to pretend it makes sense.

The BBC/Time Life production is set in the 1700s, so there are lots of wigs and lots of powder. The silly costumes work very well with the stupidity of the play.

The shining light of this production is David Warner, best known as the Cardassian who tortured Jean-Luc Picard in season 6 of Star Trek: The Next Generation (http://youtu.be/o_eSwq1ewsU). He is absolutely brilliant as Don Adriano, and plays the love-sick Spanish knight-errant with such realism that he seems to be in a different play. Don Adriano is pretty much the same character as Sir Eglamore from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, so it may be that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had an actor who was really good in that kind of role (or the audiences were shouting for more Sir Eglamore).

The play breaks down into two ensembles: The Nobles Ensemble, and the far more compelling Villagers Ensemble, comprising Costard, Moth, Dull, Holophrenes, the Curate, Don Adriano de Armado, and Jaquenetta. Holophrenes must be Shakespeare’s parody of every self-important school master he’d ever known. The audience soon learns to cringe when he appears.

In the Pageant of the Nine Worthies scene, the Villagers put on a show for the Nobles. This scene is crucial to the play.  Shakespeare directly compares the two ensembles and all but asks the audience to judge between the two: The Country Bumpkins present noble archetypes from history to the educated nobility, who heckle them mercilessly. The Nobles show poor manners, and the Villagers stand for their own dignity and honor. 

Shakespeare could have written out at least one, but better two each of the King’s men and the Princess’ ladies. If you have Longueville, you’ve pretty much got the same character as Dumaine, and if you have Maria, you’ve pretty much got Katherine. In my opinion, you’re better off without any of them.

Oh, and you’ll recognize Valentine Dyall, who has the walk-on role of Mercade. He played the Black Guardian on Doctor Who back in the 1980s (http://youtu.be/40FQXpJlFiY). He had an amazing voice.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Many people think this could have been Will’s first play, and you can tell why. It moves like a beginner play, with long passages that feel like they’re treading water until a good bit comes along. If you were to cut this play down to just the good bits, though, you’d leave out the entire plot line and most of the characters. Actually, you’d probably leave out everything but Launce’s monologue about his dog and Sir Eglamore’s two scenes.

The central conflict of the play could be the question of whether a man's friend is more important than his girlfriend. Or it might be about the importance of being true to your word. Take your pick. The play seems to flail around for a point of focus, and never seems to find one. Proteus (one of the two gentlemen) ditches his girlfriend and double-crosses his best friend for the sake of a woman who has no interest in him whatsoever. All the main characters end up miserable for a while, and then when the play’s gone on long enough, there’s suddenly a resolution where everyone’s happy. 

The BBC/Time Life version of the play does little to improve it. The cast is OK but not great, and the director’s vision simply wasn’t up to the task of making this play enjoyable. Launce and his dog are funny, the other servant is obnoxious, and the cheap sets often make as much noise as the dialogue. I wish the disc had included captions.

The bright light of this production is Frank Barrie who plays Sir Eglamore gloriously over-the top. He spends way too little time on screen, and is in my opinion, the best character in the play.

I wasn’t able to find another recording of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in Minerva or on Amazon. I listened to the Arkangel audio play many years ago, but I don’t feel the need to listen to again.

It appears there was a musical stage version in the early 1970’s starring Raul Julia. I couldn’t find any evidence that it was filmed, and I couldn’t find it online or on Minerva. It would be interesting to see someday. 

The Taming of the Shrew - McLintock!

Minerva listed this as a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. I would say that elements of this movie were inspired by Taming, most prominently the female protagonist’s name and the spousal bickering. Other than that, the two have nothing at all in common.

I’ll start out by saying that I did not enjoy this movie. Yes, John Wayne is an American film legend. Yes, he worked well with Maureen O’Hara in two other movies. But McLintock!, for me, fell flat.

Basically, John Wayne is McLintock, a cattle baron who was instrumental in kicking the Comanche off the land, but who is now respected by just about everyone. McLintock is a frontier ubermensch in a world where a man’s worth is based on his ability to punch another man in the face. Education is valued only if book learning was balanced by boxing. Maureen O’Hara is his wife, Katherine, who left him two years ago when he came home from a business trip with lipstick on his collar. He either cannot or chooses not to satisfactorily explain this. Instead he spanks her until she stops asking questions about it.

Shakespeare thought misogyny was hilarious - the central theme of The Taming of the Shrew is that uppity women need to be put in their place - and in general we’re willing to cringe a bit and forgive him because it was 400 years ago and we can congratulate ourselves on having come a long way. Violence against women just isn’t funny anymore. 

Racism isn’t funny either. McLintock! hopes to make us laugh through its portrayal of Native Americans as dangerous alcoholic thieves. It doesn’t work. Neither does the sterotypical portrayal of the McLintock’s Asian cook.

The GoodTimes DVD is of very poor quality. It looks like it’s a copy of a copy of a burned-out VHS tape copied from a worn-out film copy. They really need to go back to the original master (if it’s available) to make a good DVD. It turns out it is also available on Amazon Prime. I watched a few minutes for comparison, and the video quality wasn't any better. You can also find it on YouTube. Given the poor quality of the transfer, I can't even compliment the cinematography.

In fact, I can’t really say anything positive about this movie. If you are looking for a disappointing experience that will kill about two hours, go ahead and watch McLintock!. Otherwise, watch something else. Anything else.