Richard II - The 1978 BBC/Time Life Version with Derek Jacobi

The 2014 Olympics are over, and I'm getting back into Shakespeare. I'll be putting up a few more posts about Richard II, then I'll be on to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I've mentioned before that Richard II is my favorite of the history plays. The 1978 version with Derek Jacobi is part of the reason why. I don't remember which semester I took a Shakespeare class up at UMaine, but I do remember that I took seriously the concept that Shakespeare's plays were written to be performed and watched, not to be read. I found that Fogler Library had the complete works on VHS, and spent many hours in the media room watching these BBC/Time Life productions. Much as I'm doing now, I would do the assigned reading, and then watch the video.

Even if you've only seen a few Shakespeare films, you're probably familiar with Derek Jacobi. His work with Kenneth Branaugh includes appearing as the Chorus in Henry V  and Claudius in Hamlet. If you're a PBS viewer, you may also have seen him in I, Claudius on Masterpiece Theatre, and Cadfael on Mystery. Of his more recent work, my favorite is his appearance as the undertaker Mr. Ween in Emma Thompson's Nanny McPhee. You should check it out. He's hilarious. I think I had seen some of this before those long afternoons in the

Jacobi is great fun to watch as Richard. His voice is captivating. He's constantly twisting and turning his pitch and volume, so that even if you don't have any idea what he just said, you know that it sounded awesome. I know it's a cliche to say "I could listen to him read the phone book," but man, he would make the phone book sound amazing! This is perfect for the emotional, irrational Richard.  The problem is, that having seen Sir Derek in many many films and videos, it's hard to see him as Derek Jacobi playing Richard, instead of seeing him as Derek Jacobi as Derek Jacobi playing Richard. It feels like watching someone do a very good Derek Jacobi impression with all the lines drawn from Shakespeare.

The critical deposition scene comes out very well. It's very dark, just like the rest of the film. I don't know if it was a technological limitation (maybe the cameras they were using weren't very good, or the copies degraded over time) or an artistic choice, but the whole film is too dark. It might be they decided to save money on set dressing by putting most of the set in shadow, I don't know. Regardless, the heart of the deposition scene  is the contrast between the Bolingbroke and Richard. Bolingbroke is calm, and stoic, blandly putting up with his wildly emotional cousin. Richard is wallowing in self-pity, anger, and grief. That contrast, more than anything, makes this scene.

John Gielgud is John of Gaunt. That's really all I ought to have to say to get you to watch this.

Jon Finch makes a great Bolingbroke. He looks like a king, and is completely believable.

Charles Gray plays York. You will recognize him as the Criminologist from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Mary Morris plays the Duchess of Gloucester. You'll recognize her from the 1982 Doctor Who episode Kinda.

You probably won't recognize Jeremy Bulloch from his most famous role. He plays Hotspur in Richard II, but he played Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi.

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Richard II. Dir. David Giles. Perf. Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, and Jon Finch. 1978. DVD, Ambrose, 2004.

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.