Of Fighters and Drinkers

I've been watching Henry IV, Part I piecemeal over the past couple weeks, the BBC Television Shakespeare version. It just kind of happened, I never have time to watch the whole thing but I've been itching to watch it again so I watch a little bit here and there. It occurred to me there's a sequence of scenes in which one guy does a verbal take down of another guy. There's Hal and Falstaff, then Hotspur and Glendower, then the King and Hal.

Although Anthony Quayle plays Falstaff as just starting to get some inkling of Hal's ultimate betrayal of him, and he acts indignant at first, the beauty of Falstaff is that eventually he takes it all in good humour. What really matters to him is coin in his pocket and sack in his belly. Hotspur unwisely makes his rebel ally, Glendower, the butt of a series of very funny but vicious jabs. The King is deeply disturbed by his son's loose living. The rashness of youth and the bitterness of political responsibilities hang over the latter two. It's easy to see why Falstaff was such a popular character, he longs for the human comforts we all do. Few of us appreciate the gravity of the King's preoccupations and only a few more people will have experienced Hotspur's profound restlessness.

I was watching the Hotspur and Glendower scene last night. One sympathises with Hotspur and his disdain for pomposity but it's astonishing how little thought he gives to the precariousness of his situation and his need for allies.

MORTIMER.
Peace, cousin Percy, you will make him mad.

GLENDOWER.
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR.
Why, so can I, or so can any man,
But will they come when you do call for them?

GLENDOWER.
Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.

HOTSPUR.
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth; tell truth, and shame the devil.
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I’ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil!

MORTIMER.
Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.

GLENDOWER.
Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottom’d Severn have I sent him
Bootless home and weather-beaten back.

HOTSPUR.
Home without boots, and in foul weather too!
How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name!

Such Stuff as Soothing Shadows

Shakespeare's The Tempest becomes a luxurious daydream of ruin in Derek Jarman's 1979 film adaptation. The dark halls of an 18th century manor strewn with roses serve as the setting for characters lost in contemplative ennui in this captivating if somewhat sleepy take on the tale.

Heathcote Williams as Prospero looks slightly like the Fourth Doctor as he seems to embody the famous final soliloquy throughout the film, bemusedly regarding events as a dream state. Toyah Willcox is a daffy, mischievous Miranda while David Meyer is a guileless Ferdinand who falls under her spell. This is a reversal on the traditional interpretation of the two characters that fits the dialogue surprisingly well.

Karl Johnson plays a strangely sadistic Ariel while Jack Birkett is a refreshingly pervy and predatory Caliban. He and Miranda become sparring partners in carnal humour when he intrudes on her bath. She covers her breasts but can't hold back a wicked laugh when she shoves him out of the room.

I wouldn't call this the definitive Miranda but it's an interesting spin. Being trapped on the island would seem as likely to foster perversity as innocence, or an innocent perversity, if you like.

Derek Jarman's The Tempest is available on The Criterion Channel as part of a Derek Jarman collection this month.

Something Wicked This Way Comes Again

One half of the Coen brothers, Joel Coen, brought to the screen another adaptation of The Scottish Play, 2021's The Tragedy of Macbeth. It's a minimalist, stagebound film, its look and pacing strongly reminiscent of Orson Welles' 1948 adaptation of Macbeth. Denzil Washington and Frances McDormand are both quite competent, if not especially interesting, in the lead roles. Mostly I came away feeling like Coen was not able to rise to the level of the source material.

It'd only been six years since the Macbeth with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Coen's version is better than that shallow, overcooked turkey. But Coen's version perhaps suffers for going too far in the opposite direction. Washington and McDormand often deliver their lines in a strikingly dispassionate manner. As though they know the world turns on murder and betrayal and it looks like this is the kind assignment that was put on their desk this morning.

I think this is why critics often talked about this version really exploring Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as worldlier, older people. It made me think, maybe this play is better if at least one of them is young. Maybe a young, avaricious, beautiful Lady Macbeth drives her homebody husband to getting her wealth, or maybe a confused young Macbeth is spurred by a bitter, older and more cynical Lady Macbeth. Both of them being older both feel kind of pointless. Like, what are you two doing? It's the Dark Ages, you'll be king and queen for, what, two years? And this version removes references to Lady Macbeth's pregnancy.

Denzil Washington is really good at sounding credible. I always feel like this is a real guy going through these problems. But a little artifice would've been nice in something like the "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow" soliloquy. He rattles it off so casually. Like so many times in the film, you think, "Well, this guy's already checked out anyway." And, yeah, you can say that reflects "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing." But I feel like that line should come with a shock of revelation, or bitter pronouncement, rather then sounding like he was forced to actually explain to someone how boring he thinks everything is.

Both he and Lady Macbeth are upstaged by Ross, played by Alex Hassell, whom Coen turns into a schemer. It's heavily implied that he murdered Lady Macbeth and hid Banquo's son for his own schemes. Why? To say that this world is full of ruthless schemers? We knew that, Joel. The point here is to focus on the psychology of two of them. Oh, well.

It's not bad. The action sequences are interesting. There's some good sword fighting at the end. Still, you're better off watching the Orson Welles version or the Roman Polanski version.

Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is available on AppleTV+.

Storm Continues. Enter Lear and Fool.

My internet's been bad all weekend due to rain so I watched something I had on file last night, Laurence Olivier's 1983 King Lear. It remains my favourite of all the productions I've seen.

I think Olivier, of all the Lears I've seen, does the best job of conveying the impression of a man going mad but who is also painfully aware of his madness. That's the real heartbreak in his repeated, "Let me not be mad!" line. Not that he's going mad, but that he's aware of it. It's a real horror, especially considering it's one we all may face one day.

His madness really stems from two causes--his age and his grief. It's one thing to say he's foolish for misjudging his loved ones, but then think for a moment about what that must be like. To be brought forcibly to the realisation that your nearest and dearest aren't who you thought they were. It really comes in two layers because first he believes Cordelia and Kent aren't who he always thought they were. He can at least muster confidence enough to banish them. But when he discovers how little he could trust the promises of Regen or Goneril, he learns he can't even rely on his ability to discern revelation. He thought he had a revelation, but he later realises he understood nothing.

This confusion is strikingly mirrored in the subplot about Gloucester and his sons. The poor old man, with his eyes put out, being led to the edge of what he thinks is a cliff. It's ironic that Edgar has the last line of the play, presented like a moral, that we should say what we feel, not what we ought. He spends a lot of time deceiving his father. On the other hand, maybe that was a product of a real temporary madness on Edgar's part. Also, if we interpret the words "say what we feel not what we ought," literally, they don't mean, "Always tell the truth," as they're often thought to mean. Pretending to be Poor Tom and then pretending to have seen a monster has a kind of emotional truth, not unlike the Fool's nonsense. And it's a truth meant to help the old man, not to cut him down, as Regan's, Goneril's, and Edmund's deceptions were.

Still, it's dangerous business. With all of life's ambiguities and confusions, who's really in a position to decide when it's best to tell a falsehood? For this reason, I do think Cordelia made the right choice. Truth is too rare a commodity.

Dialogues of Recognition

Yesterday I read the lovely new Sirenia Digest which once again features the lovely art of Virgil Finlay, in this case two pieces. Caitlin R. Kiernan's new story included in the Digest, "THE TAMENESS OF WOLVES", is another dialogue like last month's, told in second person in which the reader is put in the position of the narrator's lover. This lover, the narrator's "shadow's shadow", appears to be a murderer belonging to an old family of the southern U.S.

The dialogue probes issues of guilt and morality. I was intrigued by the story's connexion between people irresistibly drawn to each other, like the two participants of the dialogue, and their sense of uncertainty about the implications of their own actions. Both characters, as Leo expressed it in Blade Runner, have that "itch you can never scratch", an elusively defined, constantly manifest problem that can never be solved. There is a corpse present in the room with the characters and we're given few details as to how or why it came to be there, something that plays well with the characters' compulsive attempts to put final definitions on, to bring conclusions and closure to, insoluble questions. And there's something very sweet about it.

Last night I was in the mood for Shakespeare and decided to go with one of his plays I hadn't read or watched in a while. So I looked to see what Broadway HD on Amazon Prime had in terms of productions. It had two--a 2016 Canadian production directed by Barry Avrich and the 1984 BBC Television Shakespeare version directed by David Jones. I hadn't seen the Canadian production before so I started with that and it features performances that are much more engaging than the old BBC production. But I soon switched back to the BBC version because it's more faithful to the text--for one thing, in the BBC version, Antiochus' daughter is clearly a willing participant in her incestuous relationship with her father while in the Canadian version she seems like she's being held hostage, in my opinion a rather boring interpretation.

All in all, it's still my least favourite Shakespeare play, an opinion in which I'm far from alone--Shakespeare's friend and contemporary Ben Jonson didn't speak well of it. Though I share T.S. Eliot's admiration for the scene in which Pericles and his daughter Marina meet as strangers. Wikipedia quotes Eliot on it:

To my mind the finest of all the 'recognition scenes' is Act V, sc. i of that very great play Pericles. It is a perfect example of the 'ultra-dramatic', a dramatic action of beings who are more than human... or rather, seen in a light more than that of day.

It's helped in the BBC production by the extraordinary beauty of the actress playing Marina, Amanda Redman.

The extremely improbable way in which Marina makes her way to the king's sick room without ever hearing his name or he hers, and the slowly spooled out pieces of poetic information about the storm at sea that attended Marina's birth are so dreamlike and strange they take on a larger significance. A lot of criticism of the play hinges on its episodic nature and lack of unity but in this scene of a King meeting and wondering at his adult daughter for the first time I find myself thinking about the play's first episode, the incestuous relationship between the other King and his daughter. There would be an obvious dramatic symmetry for Pericles to indulge in the very behaviour he deplored in Act 1. That it doesn't happen adds a peculiar sort of sacred piquancy to the dreamlike dialogue.

MARINA.
I am a maid,
My lord, that ne’er before invited eyes,
But have been gazed on like a comet: she speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endured a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.
Though wayward Fortune did malign my state,
My derivation was from ancestors
Who stood equivalent with mighty kings:
But time hath rooted out my parentage,
And to the world and awkward casualties
Bound me in servitude.
[Aside.] I will desist;
But there is something glows upon my cheek,
And whispers in mine ear ‘Go not till he speak.’

PERICLES.
My fortunes—parentage—good parentage—
To equal mine!—was it not thus? what say you?

MARINA.
I said, my lord, if you did know my parentage.
You would not do me violence.

PERICLES.
I do think so. Pray you, turn your eyes upon me.
You are like something that—what country-woman?
Here of these shores?

MARINA.
No, nor of any shores:
Yet I was mortally brought forth, and am
No other than I appear.

PERICLES.
I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping.
My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one
My daughter might have been: my queen’s square brows;
Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight;
As silver-voiced; her eyes as jewel-like
And cased as richly; in pace another Juno;
Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry,
The more she gives them speech. Where do you live?

MARINA.
Where I am but a stranger: from the deck
You may discern the place.

Thin Walls and Torment in Denmark

There is an interior, psychological quality to Hamlet that often inspires minimalist productions such as Tony Richardson's 1969 film adaptation. Like Laurence Olivier's adaptation, Richardson's features darkly lit backgrounds and minimalist sets, though Richardson employs more detailed period decor and some really pretty, effectively used tapestries. But a sense of minimalism is emphasised by the incredible number of close-up shots on actors' faces; it feels like the whole movie is close-ups. It is sometimes dizzying but the performances by Nicol Williamson, Anthony Hopkins, Roger Livesey, and Marianne Faithfull happily justify the visual scrutiny.

Actually Marianne Faithfull isn't a terribly good Ophelia--I found myself wondering if her eyebrows were paralysed. They never, ever move. But she's really sexy; for some reason she delivers all her lines like a seductress, even in her final scene when she's becoming unglued. The Wikipedia entry says Richardson focuses on the sexual aspects of the play, "to the point of strongly implying an incestuous relationship between Laertes and Ophelia," an impression I didn't get at all but Richardson does introduce Ophelia in her scene with Laertes with a wonderfully sexual low angle shot of her reclining while he leans over her.

But one of the things I really liked about this version is that the bedroom scene between Hamlet (Williamson) and Gertrude doesn't come across as sexual at all despite the fact that the actress who plays Gertrude, Judy Parfitt, was only two years older than Williamson. The idea that Hamlet wants to have sex with his mother is about as tediously commonplace as productions of Shakespeare where everyone dresses as Nazis. I really liked Williamson in this scene; he becomes plaintive and childlike and you get the sense of how much his pain is informed by the loss of his family not only through the death of his father but through treachery of his mother.

It's hard to say if I would appreciate Nicol Williamson quite so much if I hadn't grown up watching him over and over again in Excalibur but I love all his peculiar intonations and surprising emotional shifts. Anthony Hopkins was an interesting choice for Claudius--he was a year younger than Williamson but already capable of an excellently naturalistic delivery. I especially loved how he delivered the line telling Gertrude not to drink from the cup at the end--he says it just as he's turning from looking at something else and spots her putting the cup to her lips. So you hear the surprise in his voice that prompts him to show his hand abruptly but there's enough cunning in it, Hopkins' tone drawing back, that it doesn't come to more than the ambiguous, "Gertrude, do not drink," Richardson omitting the aside, "It is the poison'd cup: it is too late."

I was very pleasantly surprised to see Roger Livesey in two roles as the lead player and the grave digger. Like Charleton Heston in the Kenneth Branagh film, it seems like there's a tradition of casting the lead player with an established star from a previous generation and Livesey's refined bombast made him perfect. And it was just cool seeing Merlin doing a scene with Clive Candy from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. This version of Hamlet is available on Amazon Prime, a really nice HD edition.

Squashing Beatles and Lollards

Still in the mood for Dalek episodes of Doctor Who, I stumbled across something else BritBox lacks in its collection of streaming episodes when I watched the First Doctor 1965 serial The Chase last week--the clip of The Beatles from Top of the Pops. This appears not to be an error like the missing footage from Revelation of the Daleks but something to do with a licensing disagreement for U.S. distribution.

Again, I was forced back to my old copy of a serial. It's particularly a shame because this is apparently the only surviving footage of The Beatles on Top of the Pops. Supposedly The Beatles were actually supposed to guest star on Doctor Who but their management disliked the idea. Instead, the Doctor (William Hartnell), Ian (William Russell), Barbara (Jacqueline Hill), and Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), watch a Top of the Pops performance on the Doctor's new Time-Space Visualiser, a device that allows one to view any moment in any point in time and space. Good thing this never fell into the wrong hands.

At Ian's request, they also watch a bit of Abraham Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address and on Barbara's request they view a meeting between Queen Elizabeth I (Vivienne Bennett) and William Shakespeare (Hugh Walters).

Their discussion about Falstaff incorporates two stories that actually have legitimacy among Shakespeare scholars--Falstaff was supposedly based, at least in part, on John Oldcastle, a fifteenth century sort of proto-Protestant called a Lollard. I always found this a little odd since Falstaff in the plays doesn't seem like a man of great religious conviction, heretical or otherwise. I doubt Queen Elizabeth was as amused by a shot being taken at Oldcastle, in any case, as she is shown to be in the clip on the Time-Space Visualiser. She went to a lot of trouble converting the country back to Protestantism after her Catholic predecessor, Queen Mary. Elizabeth's complicated relationship with Oldcastle's descendent, Sir William Brooke, also doesn't suggest she'd react as she's portrayed on the show. But her request that Shakespeare write a play about Falstaff falling in love, which eventually became The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a real story from the period and may be true.

Each episode of the six part serial, The Chase, feels very different, almost like standalone stories but roughly connected by the Daleks chasing the TARDIS through time and space in their own newly developed time machine. My favourite is the first episode. In addition to the clips on the Time-Space Visualiser, I love the group casually exploring a really eerie desert planet with bizarre, blackened, as though burnt, objects dotting the landscape.

Ian and Vicki recklessly just strike out in a random direction while the Doctor and Barbara decide to sunbathe. They're all so sweet and innocent. I also love the grouchy Dalek slowly emerging from under a pile of sand at the conclusion of the episode.

That Old Summer Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream presents the director or production designer with a lot of potential for imagery. For the 1981 BBC Television Shakespeare version, director Elijah Moshinksy chose classic paintings as an influence, as he did with his other productions for the series, in this case Rembrandt and Rubens, according to Wikipedia. In this shot of Helen Mirren as Titania it's certainly easy to see Rembrandt's "Danae".

Mirren had previously performed in a film adaptation of the play in the role of Hermia for the superior 1968 production with Diana Rigg, Judi Dench, and Ian Holm. But the 1981 version is still very good. In addition to baroque influence for the lighting, Moshinsky's version is an extraordinarily still version of a play that typically has a lot of running around and shouting. The scene at the beginning, where Theseus (Nigel Davenport) hears the dispute between Lysander (Robert Lindsay) and Demetrius (Nicky Henson) for the hand of Helena (Cherith Mellor) looks like a living diorama with the sound of a ticking clock emphasising the low energy.

It works because it's so beautiful, inviting you to contemplate it like a painting. The play is set in ancient Greece, but like all the productions from when Jonathan Miller was producer, the costumes are contemporary to Shakespeare.

Pippa Guard plays Hermia, this being a surprisingly rare case where her physical differences from Helena resemble those in referenced in the play, including the running gags about her being taller.

HERMIA

Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

HELENA

I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me: I was never curst;
I have no gift at all in shrewishness;
I am a right maid for my cowardice:
Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,
Because she is something lower than myself,
That I can match her.

HERMIA

"Lower"? hark, again.

The whole cast is good but aside from Mirren the only other really interesting performance is Brian Glover as Bottom.

The actor and wrestler well known for playing tough guys and criminals (Alien 3, Doctor Who, Kes) he presents an intriguingly dangerous take on the foolish actor. Since we learn the players all have day jobs, one wonders if this Bottom is a gangster. It's an effective interpretation.

The sets alone would be worth watching this one. It's available to rent on Amazon Prime for just under two dollars.

Witches Tempt a One Time Wizard

If you're in the mood for Shakespeare on Halloween, the obvious choice is Macbeth. And there's no shortage of screen adaptations; I like Orson Welles' version and Roman Polanski's. The best is probably the one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, and it is brilliantly performed, though I dislike the minimalist set and the 20th century clothes. I recently watched the 1983 production for the BBC Television Shakespeare featuring Nicol Williamson in the title role. Williamson is best known now for playing Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur but he'd been a respected Shakespearean actor since the 60s. I wasn't really pleased with this version of Macbeth at first; it seemed a little flat to me, particularly in Jane Lapotaire's performance as Lady Macbeth which comes off as a simplistic Disney villain. But I warmed to the production as it went on and it seemed to me a version particularly suited for Halloween.

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Williamson was an actor whose genius was in the creative vocal choices he made in delivering his lines. Shifting from deep and full to thin and almost raspy he played his vocal chords like a piano, finding weird and, at the best of times, evocative choices for the text. At first he seemed oddly subdued in this production but his performance picks up a lot after the murder of the King, as though he made a choice that it was in this act that Macbeth first comes to life.

He shifts from quick and perfunctory to broodingly slow and desperate in the middle of lines. His "to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow" starts casual, like he would sprint past the news of Lady Macbeth and then becomes fearfully aware of the impact it's having on him as it relates to his future.

It seems like a lot of productions want to go for minimalism. It fits with the psychological position of Macbeth and his wife as their lives seem to become more and more narrowly defined by the witches' prophecy until Macbeth's soliloquies seem largely devoted to parsing their words, even before he realises they're treacherous.

As it looks like we'll be seeing in an upcoming episode of Doctor Who, James I, Shakespeare's sovereign at the time Macbeth premièred, had a particular preoccupation with witches. Shakespeare ably provides a stark example of just why one shouldn't cast their lot entirely with even fair sounding prophecy, though it's worth noting the witches never tell Macbeth to kill anyone.

The horror presented in this production has a mildly saturated, painted feel, like a Hammer film, particularly with the indoor set and fog. In this context, a simplistically villainous Lady Macbeth starts to make sense. But Shakespeare has insight into very real horror in this play which inevitably confronts the viewer in Lady Macduff's only scene, played oddly cool by Jill Baker in this production. The horrible weight of truth is still in her lines after she's been warned to flee because men are coming to murder her and her child.

Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly; why then, alas!
Do I put up that womanly defence,
To say I have done no harm?

The 1983 production isn't especially minimalist for most of its run time, featuring an impressive 360 degree backdrop indoor set with painted clouds, but the last portion of the play pares things off oddly so Macbeth has his duels with Young Siward and Macduff in complete isolation. Disappointingly, we never see any trees or even branches so when Malcolm tells his allies, "your leafy screens throw down," everyone's awkwardly already empty handed. I don't know why they couldn't at least have some simple branches. Otherwise, this is a really nice looking production and Williamson is magnetic.

Another Year, Another Lear

I've been so caught up lately watching Shakespeare productions from decades ago on Amazon Prime I almost missed it when a brand new, 2018 production of King Lear, my favourite Shakespeare play, was released on the service. Directed by Richard Eyre, who did the 2012 productions of the Henry IV plays for the BBC I didn't like, this King Lear is by no means my favourite but isn't altogether bad.

Anthony Hopkins is much too shouty as Lear at first, his delivery almost a monotone of bemused, rancorous yells. I warmed to his unconventionally repressed performance a little bit in the second half, though. When he brings in Cordelia's corpse at the end he's not crying but grinning, holding up the feather and talking about how it doesn't stir as though he's mocking the assembled troops for expecting it would. It was a nice way of showing how the man is retreating into his accustomed psychological barriers when the pain gets too much. He turns into a desperate boast his lines about besting Cordelia's hangman in combat. But it's good he does break down in tears eventually when this doesn't prove enough.

There are plenty of stars in the cast giving performances ranging from good to really good. The roles cast surprisingly with non-stars are Cordelia and the Fool; Florence Pugh and Karl Johnson, respectively, and it seems like Eyre has little interest in either character. Much of the Fool's first lines, criticisms for Lear thinly veiled as entertainment, are heard off-screen as the camera focuses on a brooding Goneril played by Emma Thompson.

I think someone decided Goneril was sexually abused by Lear. She curls up and recoils when he gets near and at one point he kisses her full on the lips after which she clasps both hands on her mouth, looking horrified. I guess it's a fair enough additional motive added for her apparent disregard for him but I found it more of a distraction than anything else. It introduces too many questions that aren't answered. Does Cordelia know about it? What does she think about it? What do any of Lears friends and supporters think about it?

Emily Watson is fine as Regan while Tobias Menzies, best known as the flamboyant, two dimensional villain from Outlander, plays Cornwall as a flamboyant, two dimensional villain. Christopher Eccleston is interesting as Oswald, a role usually played with similarly over-the-top priggishness. Eccleston's Oswald is slightly effeminate and really doesn't seem to understand what he's doing wrong by not treating Lear with deference, which somehow makes his run-ins with Kent (Jim Carter) really funny.

Jim Broadbent comes off as decent and kind as Gloucester, except in his first lines about Edmund, of course. John Macmillan, who doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, plays a mixed race Edmund, making good use of the potential in his lines for commentary on racial bias instilled by culture. He plays the role a bit broadly for my taste, though.

A lot of the characters are wearing military uniforms; the Wikipedia entry says it's set in an alternate universe, militaristic 21st century London, but putting everyone in modern military garb for a Shakespeare production is so conventional now it's gone past cliche to almost invisible. The famous storm sequence is drably, really unconvincing cgi.

Couldn't they have at least gotten a wind machine?

The performances are good, though, and I don't feel like I wasted my time watching it. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as the first production of King Lear to watch.

Twitter Sonnet #1163

Connected cans consort to cop a phone.
Distorted tanks collude to stretch the tread.
A kind of ink dissolves a human bone.
Refurbished walls conceal what painters said.
Collected shields conceal colossal arms.
Tomato shapes conspire late to-day.
Decrepit walls protect the elder farms.
Encased in cagey wool the troops display.
Decisions set in dark and courtless webs.
Tenacious seeds connect the tiny rocks.
Occasion serves when noodle's ocean ebbs.
In tightened strings the frigates built the docks.
The gift of plaque rewards recoiled gums.
Recounted years reveal consistent thumbs.

Vigorous but Fruitless Work

Clever language replete with pleasingly complex sexual innuendo is one of the distinct virtues of late 17th century and 18th century satire and comedy. So it makes sense that director Elijah Moshinsky set his 1984 production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost for the BBC Television Shakespeare in the 18th century, the play's seemingly superficial plot and playfully sexual dialogue almost making it seem like it was written over a century early. But according to Walter Cohen's introduction in the Norton Shakespeare, the play wasn't performed between 1642 and 1839. Certainly it never matches Moliere or Wycherley for genuine laughs or sexiness, the playfulness Shakespeare engages in with his dialogue being more impressively intricate than shocking. But there's something in the separation between intellect and feeling that makes Moshinsky's decision to set the play in the 18th century eminently appropriate. His choice is also effective for the visual influences he evokes.

According to the Wikipedia entry, Moshinsky drew inspiration from the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau, this Love's Labour's Lost having brighter colours and more diffuse lighting than his Baroque productions of Coriolanis and Cymballine. It's really pretty.

Jenny Agutter as Rosaline looks to have had her face browned slightly to reflect the dialogue referring to her darkness; "No face is fair that is not full so black." Though this seems generally regarded as meaning that Rosaline has black hair and eyes, Moshinsky makes a point of framing her with the Blackamoor servants called for in the stage directions. Agutter, like all the women in this production, has an appropriate quick eyed intelligence for the dialogue.

BIRON

You must not be so quick

ROSALINE

'Tis 'long of you that spur me with such questions.

BIRON

Your wit's too hot. It speeds too fast; 'twill tire.

ROSALINE

Not till it leave the rider in the mire.

The whole cast is good but Agutter is a stand out. As is David Warner (he had to turn up eventually) as the musician Armando and Geoffrey Burridge as Dumain. At the very end of the play, Valentine Dyall, the Black Guardian from Doctor Who once again, makes an appearance as the messenger who brings the play to unexpectedly sombre end. His wonderful deep voice is perfectly suited to the messenger's grim duty.

Though the fun Shakespeare pokes at the male characters' attempt at celibacy is likely related to the Catholicism of the countries of Navarre and France represented in the play, it fits well with their portrayal as 18th century academics. It's a nice idea, prettily realised.

Twitter Sonnet #1161

Contagious rests result in bedless rooms.
Tomato roofs possess a counselled wall.
Important cards portrayed essential dooms.
Encircled cords conduct a looping call.
A proven face completes the truest skull.
What time a root contained the ended hair.
Encasing lungs would try the belly hull.
Conclusion's vizard judge pronounces fair.
Retaining vests exchange a side of watch.
Tormented paisley pockets plaid for silk.
Encompassed cloves embraced embarrassed scotch.
Reclining dawn recalls its brainy ilk.
A brick and marble hall appeared for lamps.
Encoded letter nails adhered to stamps.