I haven't seen any Shakespeare live in theatre this year (the Curve in
Leicester is beyond my pocket) but I've re-read King Lear (do so annually),
Hamlet (surprisingly, I realised, for the first time in a decade), As You
Like It (the musicality hit me too), Julius Caesar, The Tempest (having
re-acquired the edition I first read it in), King John and The Taming of the
Shrew (both of those read for only the second time). I've seen a tv version
of Midsummer Night's Dream (with Mendelsohn's music), the already mentioned
Macbeth DVD (a and have also re-read the Scottish play) plus the Renaissance
Theatre film of Twelfth Night and heard on the radio a beautifully rendered
performance of King Henry VIII.
And The Sonnets for the umpteenth and Venus and Adonis for again only the
second time.
That's sort of par for recent years (I do recall a period when I went off
WS) as I find increasingly Shakespeare and the 'classic' English poets are
necessary to keep one's ear in, owing to the present's abounding deserts of
rhythmically dead language.
2009/9/29 Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> Or Laurence Harvey in Romeo and Juliet, despite the somewhat truncated
> version. The party scene, where the lovers court in sonnets, is pure magic.
>
> Or Christopher Plummer's Hamlet.
>
> Several years ago on a trip to Tucson, of all places, I saw a traveling
> production of As You Like It. I don't remember who was in the cast, but the
> Rosalind was wonderful. The poetry was so beautiful that tears rolled down
> my beard, not for the sentiments, but for the sheer shock of the music.
>
>
> At 05:40 PM 9/29/2009, you wrote:
>
>> I've never dared to re-watch it, since I saw it when I was 14 and was
>> enraptured and thus converted to Shakespeare. I rather fear that
>> Polanski's film mightn't survive the 70s, although I remember lots of
>> moody medieaval Scottish landscapes and naked witches, and I seriously
>> doubt it will horrify you. It might even make you laugh. But you never
>> know. It would be interesting to hear.
>>
>> You might be better off getting Ian McKellan's Richard III, which is
>> fantastic. Or hunting down Brook's Lear, with Paul Scofield. Or even
>> the RSC Macbeth, which you can get on DVD, with a young McKellan and
>> my favourite unknown genius Bob Peck as a heartbreaking MacDuff, which
>> is very good and very bleak.
>>
>> xA
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> > Funny about Shakespeare, how he appeareth.
>> >
>> > I just acquired a copy of the Polanski's *Macbeth*. I have never seen
>> it. I
>> > have seen *Throne of Blood*. I have seen Welles' dreadful
>> whatever-it-was.
>> > People have warned me away from the Polanski version. An old friend said
>> > "Never watch it by yourself." Even my older son, who had to watch it in
>> high
>> > school(!), said it was nightmarish. Apparently, the worst sequence is
>> the
>> > slaughter of the Macduff household, which replicates a bit too closely
>> the
>> > butchery in Polanski's own home when the Manson brain-slaves killed
>> Sharon
>> > Tate, her baby, and the others present. It was suggested to me that
>> Polanski
>> > was trying to work out his guilt over not having been there, making him
>> > sound rather like Macduff himself. I gather too that the onscreen death
>> of
>> > John Stride as Macbeth is fairly repellent. And yes, I know Francesca
>> Annis
>> > sleepwalks in her own skin and nothing more.
>> >
>> > So what am I in for?
>> >
>> > ken
>> >
>> > --
>> > ----------------------------
>> > Ken Wolman
>> >
>> > http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com
>> > http://opensalon.com/blog/kenneth_wolman
>> > http://wearethecure.org/friends/cids-memory-p-394.html
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
>> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"A window./Big enough to hold screams/
You say are poems" - DMeltzer
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
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