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.

It's All Troubling, Man

So we've come to the end of another season of Better Call Saul, a nice season finale last night, as expected, bringing Jimmy a little closer to becoming Saul but with a surprising and effective touch of ambiguity at the end. Wisely excluding Nacho entirely, the episode focused on two stories about societies where one mistake defines a person forever in the eyes of others.

Spoilers after the screenshot

In the Mike (Jonathan Banks) plot, the former cop finally finds himself forced to cross the line and kill for his crimelord boss, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito). It seems entirely out of a sense of professionalism--Werner (Rainer Bock) had screwed up too badly and so didn't rate a second chance. I liked watching Mike's clever ideas play out in the pursuit of Werner, especially the gum in the parking barrier trick, but ultimately I still just didn't find him or Werner all that interesting. And it's hard to believe Werner would be stupid enough to think he could get away with what he was doing.

Meanwhile, on Kim's (Rhea Seehorn) advice, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) goes all in on showing remorse for Chuck (Michael McKean). The promos for this season feature a black and white image of Odenkirk looking sombre holding a colour popsicle mask of himself looking ridiculously happy--that ad gimmick didn't make sense until the final episode, especially the very end where we're shocked alone with Kim when Jimmy reveals he'd been faking emotions during his tearful speech to the board reviewing his appeal for reinstatement. The ending leaves us with the question; was Jimmy lying to the board or lying to himself when he claimed he was lying? If the latter is true, as it seems likely, could he ever dig himself out of that psychological hole?

After his big finish in his speech about living up to the McGill name, the woman from the review board didn't even blink when he said he was going to practice law under a different name. Is Jimmy being rewarded for sincerity or for crafting a particularly impressive counterfeit?

It's hard to completely condemn him, though, after his advice to the teenage girl who's rejected for a scholarship. They'll never let her in, he tells her, because of the one mistake she made when she was younger. Just like Chuck could never truly accept Jimmy, however tragic we're reminded of that being in this episode's bittersweet opening flashback to the brothers actually performing karaoke together.

I kind of hope we see what happens to that girl Jimmy gives the twisted pep talk to. Maybe in flash forward to present day we'll see she's become a mega-rich, ruthless lawyer.

Now we still need to find out how Kim finally leaves him, which I'm guessing will be the focus of next season. I hope we won't have too long to wait.

A Temperature as a Fraction

Michael Moore begins his 2018 film, Fahrenheit 11/9, with a very clear question; "How the fuck did this happen?" meaning Trump's election. It's a very good question particularly since he poses it after a chilling and depressing compilation of commentators and voters showing absolute certainty in Clinton's victory. But in the course of his meandering film, which comes off more as a left slanted synopsis of political news over the past couple years than Moore's previous films, he surprisingly doesn't put much effort into answering it. Of course he mentions how he was famously one of the very few who predicted Trump's victory but he spends little time discussing his reasoning behind that prediction. The most effective part of the film has a very tenuous connexion to Trump, focusing on the water crisis in Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan. Unsurprisingly, that part of the film feels personal and certainly non-partisan. The rest of the film offers little new to anyone who follows the news.

Moore talks about the electoral college, Clinton's winning the popular vote, and justly puts blame on a massive percentage of people who didn't bother to vote at all. These are good points except no-one was bringing them up before Clinton lost. When Moore shows crowds of ecstatic Clinton supporters already celebrating her victory the night before and the thin, glum crowd at Trump's venue, he powerfully sets up a question that isn't answered by pointing to the electoral college or complacent non-voters; why were people so certain?

Moore spends a lot of time comparing Trump to Hitler. He even talks to Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, who stridently likens the separation of families crossing the Mexican border to Nazi tactics, though otherwise Moore surprisingly spends no time on this issue. But Moore never interviews a single Trump voter and, aside from comparing the propaganda of Trump's more extreme right wing, racist followers, never shows exactly why the situation in the U.S. is more like Nazi Germany than anything else.

A significant portion of the film focuses on the Parkland shooting survivors but no particular link is made between that incident and Trump. He shows clips of Trump's sit down with parents, students, and administrators but, like a lot of the coverage of that event, edits out the parents who support the idea of training and arming teachers. Instead, like much of the film, this segment seems designed to be a rallying cry to the left, focusing on how effective and powerful the student activists could be in delivering their message, a point that sits oddly next to another segment where Moore criticises the inertia of "hope". This might tie into the surprisingly critical view Moore takes of Obama in the segment on Flint.

Moore speaks to citizens and doctors who are continuing to deal with a polluted water supply following the Republican governor's decision to privatise the clean water piped in from Lake Michigan. A scene where Obama shows up to adoring crowds ends with the president giving the meaningless symbolic gesture of sipping from a glass of water, essentially shrugging off the whole crisis.

The film ends with Moore shying away from directly calling for a solution for Flint or the country but hints that extreme methods might be necessary. I'd say a clear sighted documentary that follows through on its thesis would be a good start.

"Should be Fine"

So here it is at last, the new Doctor Who, with the Thirteenth Doctor taking the series into uncharted territory. Let naysayers say what they will, I, for one, applaud the creators of the series for setting the première in Sheffield!

The Sheffield City Council seems pleased as well:

I've never been to Sheffield but I was aware of the city's association with steel because I have an almost two hundred year old straight razor made from Sheffield steel. I don't agree with the Doctor that only idiots carry knives--I suppose it's related the Doctor's aversion to weaponry but there're plenty of uses for a pocket knife beyond weapon.

Anyway. I quite liked Jodie Whittaker in the role. Taking the story out of London was certainly a good idea in the interest of making it feel like a fresh start. Establishing a network of friends and family in the Doctor's new companions really anchors the story in that location. Though, at the same time, the greater focus on the domestic felt a bit like a return to the Russell T. Davies era. Which I wouldn't be surprised to learn was the idea, given how the ratings declined after Davies left. That being said, "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" wasn't as good as "The Eleventh Hour" or "Deep Breath". But it wasn't bad.

Spoilers after the screenshot

Whittaker is my favourite aspect of this era so far. My favourite moment in the episode is when she formats Ryan's (Tosin Cole) phone and is so excited by her idea that she doesn't notice he's horrified she's deleted all his data.

I would've liked an explanation for how she managed to survive the fall alluded to in the title. Particularly since the tension in the episode's climax is in the potential for her to fall off a crane. Maybe it's regeneration energy, the same way Ten was able to regrow a hand?

Mandip Gill is a lot better than I thought she was going to be. And Bradley Walsh was good. I didn't think his wife, Grace (Sharon D. Clarke), was especially interesting except, since we hadn't heard anything about her, I speculating the whole time as to why she wouldn't end up accompanying the Doctor. Killing off a companion in the first episode is a good idea to shake things up though it might've had more impact if we'd gotten to know her. I wondered if she was a reference to the Eighth Doctor's companion, Grace, who was also only around for one episode and also worked in healthcare.

I guess you could say the Doctor battled the Tooth Fairy in this episode. It's certainly an effectively gross idea, pasting teeth all over his face. Not quite a Weeping Angel but I guess this'll do for a new monster. I'm looking forward to seeing where this series goes.

Twitter Sonnet #1162

Expected calls disperse to diff'rent nights.
A screen acknowledged not the ghostly touch.
The motion sensor blinked for passing wights.
Sensation sought was changed for nothing much.
Denial claims assorted dimes for change.
Tormented gum obliquely chews the teeth.
Contented drops directly chose the range.
For coughing throats the leaves were half the wreath.
Intended lemons launch a listless case.
Encoded climates cool to fluttered wing.
Resemblance shaped the deadly mirror lace.
Inspired cars induce the champ to sing.
Tsunami hair rejuvenates the lake.
The honest walk ensures the shoes are fake.

Houses of Autumn

Yesterday I read the new Sirenia Digest which features a very autumnal new Caitlin R. Kiernan story, "Untitled 41". It very appropriately uses the above John Everett Millais image as its cover, the story being filled with descriptions of autumn leaves.

The story's unnamed narrator talks about her dislike of autumn reflecting her perception of it as a time of death, sentiments Caitlin has expressed as her own view in her blog. The story has more to do with death than that, though in ways that aren't quite explicit until the end. Most of the story consists of a dialogue between two people one gets the impression has been compulsively returned to again and again for a very long time. There's also talk of a house in the story and a reference is made to James Whale's The Old Dark House, a movie I only saw as recently as January of this year. The significance of something being symbolic of potentially many things is brought up more than once, which gave me a sense of a frustrated uncertainty keeping the characters from moving forward, pairing well with the static image of a possibly haunted house. I was also reminded of listening to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" recently.

There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven

The only birds in "Untitled 41" are crows, though. But this contributes wonderfully to the autumn atmosphere which I enjoyed despite Caitlin's stated dislike for the season.

Perennial Subversions

In 1977, Helen Mirren starred in a BBC production of one of the most notorious plays in the history of the English stage, The Country Wife. First performed in 1675, this intensely lively play upends social morality at a breakneck pace, coming at a time when the general reaction against the Puritan ban on stage plays that ended fifteen years earlier was at full steam. At the same time, as the surprisingly informative Wikipedia entry for the play notes, the presumably royalist aristocracy is not spared in the play's off hand revelation of a vigorously amoral sexual network below the surface of society. The 1977 production directed by Donald McWhinnie has great sets and costumes and features appropriately energetic performances.

Helen Mirren has such an aura of intellect I wondered if she could play the initially naive and guileless title character, Margery, Mrs. Pinchwife. I needn't have worried. Maybe successfully playing dim is the mark of a truly intelligent performer. With slightly slow, almost slurred delivery, Mirren completely sells Margery's incredible innocence.

PINCHWIFE

I tell you then, that one of the lewdest fellows in town, who saw you there, told me he was in love with you.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Indeed! who, who, pray who was’t?

PINCHWIFE

[Aside] I’ve gone too far, and slipped before I was aware; how overjoyed she is!

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Was it any Hampshire gallant, any of our neighbours? I promise you, I am beholden to him.

PINCHWIFE

I promise you, you lie; for he would but ruin you, as he has done hundreds. He has no other love for women but that; such as he look upon women, like basilisks, but to destroy ’em.

MRS. PINCHWIFE

Ay, but if he loves me, why should he ruin me? Answer me to that. Methinks he should not, I would do him no harm.

Of course, as his sister, Alithea (Ciaran Madden), remarks in aside from nearby, Mr. Pinchwife is pretty guileless himself, his dialogue often amusingly directing innocent Margery right into the arms of the sins he desires her to avoid.

Mr. Pinchwife is played by Bernard Cribbins, best known to-day for playing the sweet old man Wilfred Mott on Doctor Who. His take on the aptly named Pinchwife is more bombastic, ridiculous in his frequently backfiring attempts to keep her from London society, but also surprisingly frightening, as in one startling moment where he threatens to carve the word "whore" into Margery's face with a penknife. Cribbins holds the knife to within an inch of Mirren's eye--she admirably maintains a placid and innocent composure.

He's trying to make sure Margery stays away from the also aptly named Mr. Horner (Anthony Andrews), a gentleman notorious for making horns for married men, i.e. making them into cuckolds. Horner has a whole separate plot, one that particularly offended audiences, in which he pretends to be a eunuch to allow women the opportunity to meet with him without arousing their husbands' suspicions, an opportunity three women take with eagerness.

Of course, Pinchwife is himself ultimately responsible for Margery meeting Horner as Pinchwife brings her to the New Exchange dressed as a schoolboy, complete with candy apple. Horner's not fooled by the cross dressing for a moment, a subtle and effective joke at the expense of the familiar device from 16th and 17th century plays. Mirren takes to the role with infectious relish and as Margery very quickly starts to practise the machinations of a city woman her performance effectively shows the evolution in the young wife's understanding. The supporting performers are also very good and this production is well worth watching.

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.

Feng Shui in the Void

Mystic interior decorators may face their toughest challenge in the post-post-modern future solar system depicted in Cowboy Bebop. But fortunately this is a place bound together by the influence of feng shui.

Session Twenty One: Boogie Woogie Feng Shui

There are two layers to this episode; there's the main plot which involves Jet (Unsho Ishizuka) attempting to assist the young daughter, Meifa (Arisa Ogasawara), of his missing friend, and then there's the narrative of Jet, Spike (Koichi Yamadera), Faye (Megumi Hayashibara), and Edward (Aoi Tada) trying to define the nature of Meifa's relationship to Jet.

When the rest of the crew first see the teenage girl Jet's brought aboard, they speculate on who she might be to him, with Faye leading the interpretations at either "love child or girlfriend," both of which imply scandal. Later, Jet himself is preoccupied with how he must look sitting with Meifa eating ice cream, insisting he's too young to be her father and awkwardly suggesting he'd more likely appear to be her boyfriend. This is all funny but it also gets back to an idea that has been important on Cowboy Bebop from the beginning; examining how new human relationships form and operate with traditional signifiers jumbled and reconfigured.

Meifa, though, doesn't really care how she looks sitting with Jet. She doesn't have the same frame of reference as Jet, lacking his knowledge and experience. Since one of Jet's well-established personality traits is a paternal compulsion to care for other people, he's naturally compelled to help her and their relationship is somewhat similar to the subtle symbiosis between him and Edward. At the same time, Meifa is also more traditional than Edward: she has attachments. She wants to find her father, unlike Edward who apparently can give or take her father, and Meifa's devoted to an old belief system, feng shui.

Modern practitioners of feng shui may be surprised to learn their belief system encompasses a stone that opens a hyperspace portal when hit with a laser cannon. But the point is that feng shui actually works here, much as Spike's "flow like water" martial arts seems able to compete with the sensory chaos. The compulsion to define Meifa's relationship with the crew of the Bebop continues when Spike and Faye are looking for justifications for protecting her. When the need to protect the Bebop isn't enough for Faye, Spike says, "We're fairies who are going to grant the princess' wish." He's partly joking but then one might also remember how Spike has defined his past as a kind of dream; the collection of relationships and experiences his own mind has sorted into a narrative. So he can answer the need to define Meifa's place.

...

This entry is part of a series of entries I’m writing on Cowboy Bebop for its 20th anniversary. I’m reviewing each episode individually. My previous episode reviews can be found here:

Session One
Session Two
Session Three
Session Four
Session Five
Session Six
Session Seven
Session Eight
Session Nine
Session Ten
Session Eleven
Sessions Twelve and Thirteen
Session Fourteen
Session Fifteen
Session Sixteen
Session Seventeen
Session Eighteen
Session Nineteen
Session Twenty

The Spirit, the Letter, or Neither One

Last night's new Better Call Saul, the penultimate episode of the season, was about deceptions, some successful, some not. Written by Gennifer Hutchison, it featured some particularly nice drama between Kim and Jimmy. And it was decently directed by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul's co-creator.

Spoilers after the screenshot

I like this shot where we see Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) speeding out from the lower level of the parking garage before coming around and parking in front of a calmly waiting Kim (Rhea Seehorn). I wonder if Odenkirk was driving the whole time or if the car was swapped out when it went off screen. The driving was definitely part of the performance.

You can't blame Jimmy for being angry. After all the work he put into that hearing, they wouldn't give him his law license back because he didn't seem "sincere". It's a nice, subtle point--even though we saw Jimmy practising facial expressions before the meeting, I do believe he believes he was sincere. There's some difficult ambiguity there because, obviously, in that situation, some finesse is required and expected so it's not quite so easy to know where the line is. Then throw in the fact that Jimmy does not want to confront his feelings about his brother and it is plausible that the people interviewing him do think there's something off about him.

Kim seems to think it's obvious he should've talked about his brother. It seems unfair, to me, that this would be expected; surely if a man doesn't want to discuss his deceased brother, that should be his right. I felt the sense of insincerity came in when he credited the University of Samoa as his inspiration to get into law. I thought he was going to say Kim. Maybe, starting with Chuck, he's getting into a habit of not acknowledging his own feelings, which one could imagine is an occupational hazard for a con man.

Just as I thought last week, the idea for a con Kim had was related to the Mesa Verde thing and the first scene from last night's episode was a bit of wicked fun. Kim and Jimmy pretend to be siblings and he's the irresponsible brother who accidentally spills milk on the documents Kim wants replaced--they perfectly create a scenario to generate sympathy from the woman working at the facility where the documents are processed. The Jimmy Buffet t-shirt was a great touch.

And it seems Jimmy (McGill) has a point about Kim seeing herself as superior to him. It's convenient how easily she can forget this con from the beginning of the episode and go back to admiring her new briefcase while in a conference call.

The Nacho and Mike plots also involved deception though, once again, it's mainly just more needless set-up for Breaking Bad. There's a ridiculously overwrought explanation for Hector Salamanca's bell. Werner, the German contractor working for Mike, ingeniously engineers his escape though, in the end, considering what he sacrifices to do it--not only his well paying job but his future safety--he just seems phenomenally dumb. Hopefully next week will focus mainly on Kim and Jimmy. We obviously know he gets his law license back somehow so this new obstacle and the tension that goes with it are intriguing. How's he gonna get out of this one?

A Tragedy in Chiaroscuro

For Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the tale of a military leader's failure to become a tyrant, director Elijah Moshinsky produced a painterly production for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1984. Like his production of Cymbaline, it seems primary influence came from Baroque painters, his beautiful uses of darks and lights recalling Caravaggio and Rembrandt, and making it a damned shame the BBC's policy insisted the production be shot on tape. The dark and light aesthetic certainly works for this story about the conflict between a philosophy of enforced control by one man and the capricious tastes of the "voices", or the people.

I love this shot of Coriolanis (Alan Howard), contemplating meeting with his mother (Irene Worth), wife (Virgilia), and his child (Damien Franklin), who aim to plead mercy for Rome. Rome has exiled him, though, and now he's planning his revenge by leading an attack on the city with the forces of the Volsces, the same faction he vanquished at the beginning of the play while in service to Rome. Now he's steeling himself, renouncing all former ties of loyalty and affection. Moshinsky turns soliloquies into voice over narration and we hear Coriolanis' thoughts at the approach of his family;

. . . Let the Volsces
Plough Rome and harrow Italy. I'll never
Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand
As if a man were author of himself
And knew no other kin.

Alan Howard went on to play the voice of Sauron in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, which seems appropriate casting, though I don't recall a whole lot of intelligible dialogue from Sauron in those movies aside from, "I SEE YOU . . ." His performance as Corliolanus is right; old fashioned, a lot of bold delivery with thought put into the sound of the language. Coriolanus is not supposed to be a winning orator but in Howard's delivery is the inflexible and resolute commander. There's a vicarious thrill in his taunts to Aufidius (Mike Gwilym) at the end of the play.

Many who've written and commented on the play have perceived a homoerotic quality in the relationship between Coriolanis and Aufidius, the Volsce military leader, and Moshinksy plays this up by having the two men fight shirtless in the early scenes and then, later, when the banished Coriolanis comes to Aufidius to make an alliance, the scene as presented in a dark, intimate location with both men partially undressed. As though, for this point in the dialogue when Coriolanis reveals his identity to his former enemy, the confession is made after the two have had sex. It's a fair reading given how Aufidius describes his pleasure at finding Coriolanis on his knees before him as exceeding the pleasure of embracing his wife though I would say the delight in dominating one's enemies needn't necessarily be sexual.

There's a Satanic quality in the Volsces emphasised in this production by the presence of Valentine Dyall, the Black Guardian from Doctor Who, as Adrian, a prominent Volsce with whom Aufidius holds council. With his wonderful, eerie, deep voice he seems to be as much the malicious manipulative being here as the Black Guardian.

Another great deep voice in the cast is Joss Ackland as Menenius, Coriolanis' ally in Rome. He's presented as honourable and just though there is a wicked savour in his delivery of the lines early on comparing Rome to a human body when talking to the crowd of Plebeians displeased with the government;

MENENIUS:

There was a time when all the body's members
Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it:
That only like a gulf it did remain
I'th' midst o'th' body, idle and unactive,
Still cuphoarding the viand, never bearing
Like labour with the rest; where th'other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participate, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. The belly answered--

SECOND CITIZEN:

Well, sir, what answer made the belly?

MENENIUS:

Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,
Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus--
For, look you, I may make the belly smile
As well as speak--it tauntingly replied
To th'discontented members, the mutinous parts
That envied his receipt; even so most fitly
As you malign our senators for that
They are not such as you.

…

Note me this, good friend:
Your most gave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered:
"True it is my incorporate friends," quoth he,
"That I receive the general food at first
Which you do live upon; and for it is,
Because I am the storehouse and the shop
Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood
Even to the court, the heart, to th'seat o'th'brain;
And through the cranks and offices of man
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live. And though that all at once . . . cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up that all
From me do back receive the flour of all
And leave me but the bran."

By contrast, the senators who banish Coriolanis are played as petty and foolish. The text of the play is a little more even handed, presenting the real and perennial conflict between the need for a central authority and the need for the people's voices to be respected and heard. But it's not so broad that it breaks the production--the only other complaint I have is that transitions are much to abrupt. One moment you have Coriolanis discussing his impending banishment, then instantly, the next shot is him standing destitute in a street somewhere. Maybe Moshinsky felt this was better than the lacklustre establishing shots of exteriors the budget would've accommodated but, when one assumes the original performances must have had a few moments of prop and scenery shifting in between lines, the sudden transitions don't feel right for the play.

Otherwise, though, this is a lovely production with really good performances.

Twitter Sonnet #1160

Relieving threads the pasta took the floor.
Appeasing savour saved tomato sauce.
Collections dried to spike the footed tour.
To boiled water noodles slowly toss.
A cape ascends emerging ladders late.
The chutes for snakes replace the guilty ink.
The theft prevention broke a stolen fate.
The safety pins have fallen 'neath the sink.
Forgotten cores contain the apple plugs.
Devices hem the cordless mouse to click.
A distance holds the wire's waiting bugs.
Electric rain has left the circuits slick.
Bananas place the human work in peels.
An armoured tread replaced the office reels.