On the subject of Kenneth Branagh playing Sir Laurence Olivier, an anonymous poster asks what modern actor might be case to play Sir John Gielgud. Good question, and a potentially fun game.  Pick your favorite “Shakespeare Great” and suggest who might play him (or her) in the appropriate movie.  Barrymore?  Burton?  Booth?  Why do so many great Hamlets have B names? 🙂

This can’t be a good idea, I’m pretty sure the universe will explode. Kenneth Branagh, who we know and love for his Hamlet (among others), who one generation of geeks knows as Professor Lockhart from Harry Potter and a different generation will soon know from his Thor, is scheduled next to play … …Sir Laurence Olivier. Yes, the man who set the bar for modern interpretation of Hamlet will be playing the man who set the bar for interpreting Hamlet a lifetime ago.  Literally – Branagh was born in 1960, Olivier’s Hamlet was made in 1948. The movie, unfortunately, is not anything to do with Hamlet.  My Week With Marilyn will tell the story of Olivier’s time with Marilyn Monroe on the set of 1957’s The Princess And The Showgirl.  Still, I imagine somebody could sneak in some Shakespeare references. I wonder what Branagh’s thinking? How cool would it be to play Olivier?

It seems these days that we don’t so much make new movies, we just remake old ones.  Here’s one list of 25 or so remakes either coming or already here, and there are plenty more depending on how you count. Is the same true with Shakespeare?  The man was involved in 38ish plays, all public domain, that most people will argue represent the foundation of English literature.  Yet we keep making Macbeth/Lear/Hamlet/Dream over and over again.  Why? Is it an issue with moviemakers? Is it part of their pattern to find what works and just keep doing it?  Why take a chance on Cymbeline if you can get Al Pacino signed on for Merchant again? Or, to tie this in to the Timon thread, is it an issue with the source material?  Is it simply the case that some of the plays are harder (if not impossible) to make a good movie out of? I’m very curious to see how Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus does when it comes out.  But if it succeeds will that be due more to the all-star cast, to the fact they’ve already attached “Hurt Locker” imagery to it to capitalize on a known quantity, or because the source material is that strong?  For that matter, does it matter?  Should we just call it a good thing that we get another mainstream movie of a, for better or worse, lesser known play?  Whatever puts the butts in the seats, I always say.  Waiting to hear “So, did you see Coriolanus yet?” come out of a random stranger’s mouth.

For those readers who don’t cruise the comments, reader Ren has been on something of a friendly crusade to promote the lesser-known Shakespeare play Timon of Athens.  I thought it would be fun to shine to spotlight a bit and give us all an education in why Timon has gotten a bad rap, and why we should revisit. Some foundation for you to work with, Ren: A google search of “Timon of Athens” returns 369,000 results.  Comparatively, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” returns 21 million.   (In Timon’s defense, “Pericles Prince of Tyre” only rings up 72,000 hits.) According to Amazon, there are 10x as many books on Hamlet as there are on Timon. IMDB does claim that somebody made a Timon movie in 2009, though no meaningful details about popularity, release dates or box office are available.  Before that there was a TV adaptation in 1981, almost 30 years ago.  Macbeth?  50+ hits, and that’s just for title match.  And that includes one last year, two this year and one next year. Clearly the world has missed out on this hidden gem.  Enlighten.  (And please take this challenge in the light-hearted manner it is intended, I’m not trying to be argumentative about it.  I’m genuinely curious to shed some light on a play that I’m clearly not alone in not knowing enough about.)

Wabash Valley Correctional Institute is not the first facility to have the prisoners interact with Shakespeare, but they’re the first that I know of who are writing their own adaptations. Instead of just staging the original play, they read through the text (in this case, Taming of the Shrew) with the program coordinator before going off to work on their own adaptation.  Here the play is used to teach about the problem of domestic violence (the inmates were even partnered with women from another facility so they could get both sides of the issue).  The new play is then performed. I find this intriguing.  I mean, I don’t think Shakespeare had domestic violence in mind when he wrote the play (it is a comedy, after all), so this is surely a case of making Shakespeare say what you wish he said.  But still, if it works, is it a bad thing?