Author: duane

Christopher Plummer, No!

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No more Shakespeare for Christopher Plummer, says Christopher Plummer.
Why?

“I’ve already played all the great Shakespearean roles that fit my age except for Falstaff and I don’t want to wear all that f— padding,” insisted the Montreal-born actor who turns 81 on Dec. 13.

While it’s sad to see the great actors step aside, you can’t argue with the reality of it. The man’s Romeo days are past. And it looks like he’s had his share of Lear and Prospero. Maybe he doesn’t want to spend his days doing Lord Capulet. (The article does point out that Plummer is still very active, and will be moving on to some O’Neill, Shaw, Ibsen and the Greeks.)
Interesting – he’s doing The Tempest on stage right now, and I see a “tv movie” credit for The Tempest in IMDB. Will this be a a filmed version of his performance, much like McKellen/Stewart/Tennant before him? That would be highly cool.
I think modern audiences would agree that his greatest Shakespearean role was that of General Chang in Star Trek VI : The Undiscovered Country. 🙂
On a more serious note, which Harry Potter character do you think he should have played?

Julie Taymor on The Colbert Report

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

Do not miss the latest episode of Stephen Colbert’s show where he interviews director Julie Taymor almost entirely about The Tempest. I was a little upset when I saw the TV Guide and she was billed strictly as the director of that ridiculous Spiderman musical, but as far as I can tell Colbert did not mention Spiderman at all.

Highlights:

“That’s how I like my Shakespeare – on fire.”

“So it seems like a cross between Lost, and Harry Potter.”

“That’s what I say, modernize the language! Don’t say thou, say you! Don’t say orisons, say prayers. Don’t say zounds, say holy sh_t!”

I was excited for the Kill Shakespeare guys (maker of the comic book where all of Shakespeare’s greatest characters go on a quest to find their creator) because Taymor mentioned them on the show. But then she proceeds to say that it’s a modern translation and give it a literal thumbs down (and I do mean that, she physically made the thumbs down gesture on national television). That had to hurt a bit. But then, who knows? Maybe the audience that they’re going for is precisely the group that would say “Oh, thank god, it’s not in the original Shakespeare language.”

Interesting twist : Taymor does say that a major part of the story changes when Prospera is a mom and not a dad. With a dad, the entrance of Ferdinand is all about “You’re not good enough to take my little girl away.” But with a mom, she says, it’s a completely different relationship and all about how mom knows exactly what her daughter is feeling. Should be interesting to see how that plays out on film.

Right before the show, a tv-commercial played for The Tempest. Seriously, I was shaking as I watched it. I called in the kids and replayed it 3 times. I can not remember the last time I got to witness a mainstream Shakespeare event like this. Heck, the last (and only!) time I saw a Shakespeare movie in the theatre it was Mel Gibson’s Hamlet back in 1990 – and we had to argue with the manager that night because he said there weren’t enough people in the theatre to show it.

I don’t need it to be a good movie. I’m more than thrilled enough to hear people talking about it, and to imagine a parade of people who start with “Let’s go to the movies” as their first plan, and “What should we see?” as the second. Those people, even if they don’t choose to go, will at least have the opportunity to see it listed and say “Well there’s a showing of The Tempest at 7:15, I heard it’s like Lost meets Harry Potter. And it’s got that drunk guy who married Katy Perry in it.”

Harry Potter is Shakespeare

~ duane ~ 11 Comments

When the latest Harry Potter movie opened and there were people lined up around the block to see the midnight show, I joked that I should have gone up and down the line telling them that they were a week early, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest by William Shakespeare didn’t open for another month.

I wonder, though, what a generation of Harry Potter fans would think if they realized that nearly every major actor in the Harry Potter movies is also a well-known Shakespearean?

There are so many, I don’t even know where to start.

Professor McGonagall / Maggie Smith – Played Desdemona (from Othello), Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing), Portia (Merchant of Venice), and the Duchess of York (Richard III) before Harry Potter ever came along. And, on top of that? Not only did she play the *voice* of Rosaline in a production of Romeo and Juliet (normally Rosaline does not appear in the play), she’s part of the voice talent for Gnomeo and Juliet as well!

I’m just getting started!

Madame Pomfrey / Gemma Jones had her own turn at Portia in Merchant of Venice.

Professor Trelawney / Emma Thompson – Once married to Shakespeare workaholic Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson can be seen in her husband’s Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V .

Professor Snape / Alan Rickman – Famous for that voice of his, one of Rickman’s first film roles was Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. Always the bad guy, it seems.

Sirius Black / Gary Oldman – Dear Sirius gets a special mention on this list for playing half the lead in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which if you’re not familiar is something of a “behind the scenes” retelling of Hamlet, and a pretty amazing piece of movie making.

Bellatrix Lestrange / Helena Bonham Carter We also have the woman who killed Sirius. Ms. Carter was Ophelia to Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, and Olivia in Twelfth Night (thank you, commenter, for reminding me of this major character!)

Professor Gilderoy Lockhart / Kenneth Branagh – You may not even remember Branagh’s role, since he appeared only in the Chamber of Secrets movie. But his presence in the Shakespeare world is undeniable: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Love’s Labour’s Lost. His 4-hour full-text Hamlet has assured that generations to come will study his contributions to the field.

Voldemort / Ralph Fiennes – He who must not be named is currently wrapping up production on Coriolanus, one of the most rarely filmed Shakespeare plays.

What about Dumbledore? Unfortunately the Harry Potter franchise was not graced with the presence of Sir Ian McKellen, who was busy playing a different wizard. Although he did show up long enough to make Harry Potter nervous. No, Dumbledore was actually played by two different actors – Richard Harris, until his death in 2002, and Michael Gambon in the following movies. Although a long time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Harris did not perform Shakespeare in any movies that I can locate (though he did play in a television series called “Caesar”, this had nothing to do with the Shakespeare play). Michael Gambon as well was a regular at the RSC, playing King Lear, Othello, and Mark Anthony.

So the next time somebody wants to engage you in conversation about how awesome the acting is in the latest Harry Potter movie, don’t roll your eyes. Instead, ask if they want to rent a movie that Sirius Black made with that dude Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction. Or see if they want to go wait in line with you for Voldemort’s next movie.

UPDATED: I know that we can’t ever make this list complete, and I didn’t try to get every single person, but we can’t forget Barty Crouch / David Tennant.  I mean come on, the man is Hamlet!

UPDATED AGAIN : Added Helena Bonham Carter after being reminded in the comments. I can’t do this for every single update, but I am particularly interested in any actors that have performed Shakespeare on film where you might actually have a chance to see it. If Harry Potter fans do show up and do want to see their favorite characters in Shakespeare roles, I’d like to be able to point them to movie titles they could potentially seek out.

Review : Wayward Macbeth

~ duane ~ 1 Comment


What is the magical spell that Orson Welles legendary “Voodoo Macbeth” holds over us? It was neither the first nor the only production of its kind, and yet 75 years later this the one that we go back to as one of the best examples of what a visionary director can do with Shakespeare. Ironically there’s talk of someone actually doing “Welles’ Voodoo Macbeth” again, as something of an homage. Not really sure how I feel about that. Newstok’s own essay in the collection refers to these as “re-do Macbeths.”
Anyway that brings us to Weyward Macbeth : Intersections of Race an Performance, edited by Scott Newstok. Scott was one of the first authors (editor, to be more specific) to have enough faith in my fledgling little site to send me a copy of his book, Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare, for review. I had no idea who Kenneth Burke was at the time, and said as much, but I must have done something right because Scott’s kept in touch over the years.
When Scott offered me a review copy of his latest, my first reaction was “Oh, like Voodoo Macbeth.” Scott said that reactions such as mine, this believe that the universe of what we’ll call “racial Shakespeare” began with Welles, was really a motivating factor for the book’s existence. Who paved the way for Welles’ vision? What’s happened in the 75 years since? Time neither started nor stopped in 1936, and there’s plenty to talk about on both sides of this particular (though monumentous) event in Macbeth history.
When I received the book, a collection of essays on the subject, I did just like I did with the Burke book – I flipped around the contents to find somewhere I felt like I could dive in. I looked to see where Welles and voodoo showed up, and was intrigued to see the first essay about Welles on page 83, 9 essays in. What, then, came first? I see that essay #8 is entitled Before Welles: A 1935 Boston Production. Coming from Massachusetts, I’m intrigued. I pick that one. 1935? Like, the year before? Why have we never heard of that one?

This production did not go for an exotic locale, though it was indeed an “all negro” cast (that is the term used in the essay). Other than that it was intended to be staged largely as Shakespeare wrote it, specifically because the director believed strongly in presenting the talent and range of his black actors. (This to me sounds like something of a snipe at Welles’ production which gained its legendary status precisely for its staging and its direction, and almost nothing is ever said of the actors themselves.)
Did Welles get wind of this production? That would, as the essay understates, “prove an important complication of the Welles legend.” I’ll say. He always claimed that his wife gave him the idea. But what credit would be due if he got the idea from seeing (or at least hearing about) a previous, similar production?
The book is full of small little fascinating selections like this. Flip toward the front of the book and you can read stories of Frederick Douglass using passages from Macbeth in 1875. Do not miss the picture of Ira Aldridge, a black man, portraying Macbeth in 1830.
Or flip toward the end and maybe head right for the sure-to-raise-eyebrows “ObaMacbeth” essay which goes straight for Barack Obama. After mentioning that Obama’s campaign never invoked Macbeth, the essay author Richard Burt spots a Newsweek story that broke out the footage from Welles’ production and basically called upon Obama to bring about a progressive revolution to the National Endowment for the Arts.
With 26 essays spanning over 200 pages, there is a massive amount of information here about the history of interpreting the Scottish play. An excellent and thought-provoking collection from Scott Newstok once again, and I’m pleased that I get the opportunity to have projects such as these cross my desk.

What Shakespeare Did You Read In High School?

~ duane ~ 39 Comments

I always assume that Romeo & Juliet is still the most popular, but I have nothing to back that up except my own experience which is now pretty old :). I also have no true appreciation of the breadth of plays that some teachers choose.

So, enlighten me. Whether you teach high school, you’re in high school, or, like me, high school is a distant memory, what plays did you read? The more you remember, the better. I’m trying to develop a spectrum from most commonly read all the way down to never read, so it’s equally important that we learn which plays *arent* being taught. If you’re a teacher, a little extra info on frequency (“I’ve taught Hamlet every year for 20 years but this is the first year we’re doing All’s Well That Ends Well”) would help as well.

I remember reading: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Othello and Taming of the Shrew. I think I can also include Richard II, the Henry plays, and Troilus and Cressida – but truthfully, I can’t remember whether I read those in high school or early in college. Maybe Midsummer?

Who else? If you’re a teacher and know teachers in other schools, please take a moment to forward this post. The more information, the better!