The very welcome trend for A-list celebrities to get on a West End stage and test their Shakespeare chops continues with some exciting announcements!

https://deadline.com/2024/07/sigourney-weaver-west-end-tempest-1236026153

First, we have Tom Hiddleston and Haley Atwell taking on Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. “You had me at Tom Hiddleston,” as the saying goes. If that’s not a saying, it should be. I don’t know if Haley Atwell (perhaps most well-known as Peggy Carter in many of the Captain America movies) has much Shakespeare to her credit already, though I do see a short Cymbeline in her IMDB history (as Innogen).

But what really caught my eye was Sigourney Weaver as Prospero?! Nice. The last time I saw a female Prospero was Helen Mirren in Julie Taymor’s movie adaptation. I assume they’ll do a similar thing where they gender-swap the role and make “Prospera” the mother figure, which, for my money, drastically changes the family dynamic of the play. But maybe that’s just because I’m a father.

I’m excited about the potential here because I never thought of Weaver as a Shakespearean. But apparently she’s got some credits to her name. She played Goneril in a 1979 King Lear while in college, and then Portia in a 1986 off-Broadway Merchant of Venice. What I found really neat, though, is her quote about bringing some Shakespeare to her break-out movie role in Alien:

The star once revealed that she pretended “I was doing Henry V the entire time” she was playing Ripley in Alien. “I thought, ‘Well, as a woman, I’ll never be cast as Henry V, so this is my Henry V,” Weaver told New York magazine in a 2012 interview. 

I’m fascinated because that movie came out in 1979. When presumably she was either just out of college, or even still in. Shakespeare must have been completely new to her. But she still saw it as the source to build her character.

I hope she crushes it as Prospero. I also hope that the trend of taping these silly things continues. It’s not like all of us can just zip on over to the West End and get a ticket, especially when big celebrity names are the draw.

I probably last saw the rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally when it first came out in 1989. As a Gen-X nerd, I go back to a lot of “classics” from that era, but I’m more into stuff like Wargames and Short Circuit.

Well that changed recently when we were reminded of the movie in the presence of our now college-aged daughters and we thought, oh, we have to watch that again. Long story short they’d still rather play Minecraft with their brother – no amount of calling them back into the room to laugh at the funny 80’s hair or to not miss the iconic lines would catch their interest. No matter, my wife and I sat and re-watched it anyway.

And what’s this? Where exactly do they bump into each other? I pause and rewind. Because, unlike in 1989, I can do that now. Something about this scene looks familiar …

They’re actually in Shakespeare & Co! In New York, of course, not Paris. I would never have recognized that on first watch. But it leapt right out at me almost 40 years later.

https://www.businessinsider.com/when-harry-met-sally-details-might-have-missed-easter-eggs-2022-12

What I also didn’t realize is that this scene is the inspiration for the whole “You’ve Got Mail” movie, where big box stores like Barnes & Noble shoved little indie bookshops out of existence. Now I’m going to have to go re-watch that one for Shakespeare references. Guess it’s Meg Ryan Week at Shakespeare Geek’s Place!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/pat-heywood-dead-franco-zeffirelli-romeo-juliet-1235959069/

Pat Heywood, the veteran Scottish actress who made her film debut as Olivia Hussey’s nurse and confidant in Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, has died. She was 92.

For some, Zeffirelli’s version is the definitive movie adaptation, the one we were shown in school as our introduction to Shakespeare’s work. But for newer generations, it poses significant issues over the nudity of its young stars.

Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, Ms. Heywood.

Hey, hey, hey now, put down your torches, I’m not the one that said it. This guy did.

I’ve had a challenging relationship with The Tempest for almost 20 years. It’s how I introduced my children to Shakespeare. I told it to them as a bedtime fairy tale. Once upon a time, a girl lived on a faraway island with her father, a powerful wizard. She learns from him that she is a long-lost princess who was banished here, with her father, by his enemies. One day, a ship runs ashore on their island, full of pirates set on seizing control of their island, but her father is far too powerful for them. Among the pirates, however, is a good man, a handsome prince, who marries her and takes her away to live happily ever after.

Did I skip a few steps? Sure. But we’re talking about a 5-year-old and her 3-year-old sister, and I had to make adjustments. My youngest was still a baby when we started this, and it’d be a few years before he asked for Hamlet. He tried King Lear once, but it made him sad. I’m not kidding.

The Big White Elephant In The Room

“But what about the whole colonialism thing?” I was asked right around the time Julie Taymor’s movie version came out. At the time, I answered honestly – I never really thought about it. To me, The Tempest can be read as the story of a father’s readiness to do anything for his daughter, including overcoming his desire for revenge.

But no one’s letting the colonialism thing go, and it’s only gotten more intense over the years. I don’t disagree that this is also the story of a powerful white man who showed up on land that wasn’t his, took one look at the creatures already living there, and said, “Mine. You’re all my slaves now.” That is also all true.

And, much like when a celebrity that’s been doing good things in the spotlight for decades suddenly has a clip surface of something they said once twenty years ago, Prospero is basically canceled. It wasn’t long before I saw articles arguing that he’s one of the worst fathers in Shakespeare. Sigh.

For years, I would answer the question, “What’s your favorite play?” with The Tempest because of the connection with my children. I stopped doing that. My children, now college-age, even stopped doing that. Because nobody wants to be attacked over it. You like that one? Therefore, you must agree with all historical instances of colonialism! That’s the only possible answer!

Where Does Hamlet Come Into This?

I still regularly skim my headlines and news stories for Shakespeare content. When I (rarely) see a Tempest story, I always check it out to see if there’s anything we can talk about. This is a good one. The author, Joseph Bissex, wants to talk about forgiveness. The Tempest makes sense, but Hamlet? I don’t think I’ve ever, to this moment, thought of Hamlet as a play with any forgiveness to be found or deserved. Claudius killed his father. We’ll assume for the sake of argument that this is a proven point and not still up for debate. There’s an audience that wants Hamlet to forgive him for that?

Prospero’s enemies actually didn’t kill anybody. I realize that was their intent, and it was only through Gonzago’s aid that they survived. But they did survive.

Here, the author focuses on Hamlet’s line to Ophelia, “Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.” In that moment he sees her as a fair creature and asks her to pray for him. To Bissex, this is the crucial moment. Hamlet should have stopped right there. He hasn’t killed anybody yet. He should (my words) leave them all to heaven. We could have ended up in a comedy with a marriage at the end (his words).

I don’t really think The Tempest is better than Hamlet. Much of that is because of the magic element. The most interesting thing about Shakespeare to me is the depiction of human nature. Despite the royalty, swordfight and fine, ghost, it’s a more accurate and in-depth depiction of human relationships than one about magic spirits, even if I do like the father/daughter dynamic more for obvious reasons.

But this angle is an interesting comparison that you don’t typically see.