Elsewhere I've reviewed Anton Lesser's Naxos recording of Hamlet.

29 Anton Lesser

Hamlet played by Anton Lesser.
Directed by Neville Jason.

Since brevity is supposed to be the soul of wit, I will be brief. As well has having the budget classical music market sealed up, Naxos also have a list of drama audiobooks that covers most of the canon and that includes two different Hamlets – the early Gielgud (coming soon) and this 1997 recording with Anton Lesser in the title role. Lesser first professionally played the role on stage under Jonathan Miller in 1982 at the age of thirty (having previously attempted it at school at sixteen) for the Donmare Warehouse. The full story of that production is in Mary Zenet Maher’s Modern Hamlets and their soliloquies which does a good job of mythologizing their efforts.

With that in mind I was rather looking forward to this recording and indeed it starts out well enough with some unidentified classical music on the soundtrack which works as a dramatic score. But it doesn’t take too long to realise that director Neville Jason isn’t interested in providing a too radical interpretation of the text and within a few scenes a strange lethargy breaks in as the drama falls out of joint and I was left enjoying this and that small bit of business but unable to really become fully engrossed. By the time of The Mousetrap, I was actively disappointed.

But I’m willing to admit it doesn’t sound like it’s all the cast’s fault. Rather the cast all seem to be appearing in different versions of the play, as though in turning up for the recording, they’re doing the version of the character they may previously have offered on stage. Lesser certainly has that deliberately unlikeable adolescence and I certainly agree with the reviewer (quoted in Maker’s books) who said that it was the first time that they’d wondered by Claudius doesn’t simply off the boy too since we know he has the wherewithal. The answer is of course that then we’d only have half a play.

But generally, if indeed this was directed in the traditional sense, Jason – perhaps guided by Naxos – was most interested in producing a conventional reading of the full text, with a musty Polonius, panto Claudius and indeterminate Gertrude. Only Emma Fielding seems to break with tradition with an Ophelia who’s a very modern woman of the kind that appear in BBC nine o’clock dramas, quick witted and slightly naughty. When she agrees to her father’s request to stay away from Hamlet, she gives the impression that she’s only telling him what he wants hear, fully intending to raid the prince’s bedchamber again that night. Sadly, obviously, events conspire against her.

Elsewhere I've reviewed the Penguin Popular Classics edition of Hamlet.

Hamlet (Penguin Popular Classics). Edited by Dr. G B Harrison.

Who's There?

The Penguin Popular Classics edition of Hamlet (for which a review copy was supplied) is something of a publishing classic as well as a cheap way of picking up the play. From the mid-30s onwards, Penguin pioneered the production of inexpensive copies of contemporary fiction, the familiar three band, two colour coded cover filling news stands which had previously only carried newspapers and magazines. Penguin Classics sprang out of that spirit, offering quality presentations of great literature from around the world at a relatively inexpensive price making them accessible to an audience outside of academia, in some cases, for the first time.

Open the florescent green cover of the Penguin Popular Classics and after the title page we find a reprint of Dr. GB Harrison’s original Penguin edition from 1937. Harrison was the general editor of the Penguin Shakespeare between 1937 and 1959 and one those old scholars who oscillated between action in both in both world wars (working for army intelligence) and years spent in academia, writing seminal books, in his case about the Elizabethan age. On my own shelf I have Harrison's Introducing Shakespeare, produced for the Pelican imprint at around the time of this Hamlet edition.

General Introduction

This edition opens with a succinct but surprisingly detailed biography of Shakespeare and his position in the theatrical life of the London from Henry VI to the ultimate publication of the plays, the tone of which suggests that as with most artists, even he was outpaced by youngsters like Ben Johnson with new ideas. That’s followed by a few pages on Elizabethan theatre emphasising the bareness of the staging, illustrated with the rather nice wood-engraving of the Globe Theatre by R.J. Beedham, the image of which will now be familiar to anyone whose visited the reconstruction.

Introduction

Those same sections appeared in all of the original Penguin Shakespeares edited by Harrison before he provided an individual essay describing the origins of each individual play. In Hamlet’s case that means a lengthy synopsis of what was believed at the time to be the source text Shakespeare would have used, Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques (skipping over Belleforest's own source Saxo Grammaticus) and some consideration of the textual confusion between the three printings of the plays and the decisions Harrison therefore had to make in preparing the text.

The Text

Harrison notes that while the tradition is to conflate the texts (as happened later with Penguin’s New Shakespeare editions) or to employ the second Quarto with Folio corrections, this edition prefers the Folio with Q2 as the basis “correction obvious mis-readings by the Folio”. Having said that, Harrison has still followed the Theoboldian tradition of adding to the main text such Folio omissions, Q2 additions as Hamlet’s Act IV soliloquy “How all occasions do inform against me..” but with square brackets around them, which still suggests conflation through the back door to a purist like me.

Notes and Glossary

At the back of the book are notes and glossary sections with in some places lengthy expositions about the text, explaining contemporary references, offering commentary on the action and extrapolating the historical underpinnings which with contemporary eyes demonstrate the change in educational expectations. At one point Harrison says that “centre” means “the centre of the Earth which was regarded as the absolute centre of the universe” without mentioning Ptolemy or explaining why, something which would have to be done now.

How is it, my lord?

At £2 this is a bargain. However, I still have some reservations, not least that Hamlet scholarship has moved on in the seventy years since this volume was originally published. Some of Harrison’s conclusions, especially about biographical dating and the origins of Q1 have become antiquated. Perhaps a future edition might include a couple of pages putting the main text into some context or at the very least reprint the author’s note which appears on the back of Introducing Shakespeare, thereby underscoring the great contribution Harrison originally made to our national understanding of this play and its writer.

Hamlet (Penguin Popular Classics) edited by Dr J B Harrison is published by Penguin Classics. £2 paperback. ISBN: 9780140620580.

produce a poster.

TV An email ...

To: Licensing and Creative, Pyramid International (official licensees for Doctor Who posters)

Hello,

While your Doctor Who character posters are very exciting, some of us fans and kids and fans who are kids and fans who have kids always love something interactive. It's why we purchase the Sonic Screwdrivers and standees in our droves.

Why not produce a poster of the crack in Amy Pond's wall when she was seven years old?

Then we could put it up in our own bedroom walls, run our fingers along it and survey it with our sonic screwdrivers and say epic things about time being out of joint etc.

After suggesting it to the population of twitter, most people thought it best if I drew one with a marker pen or simply cut a hole in the wall myself. But I'm not sure the landlord would like that. Plus it has to be portable. The fictional crack itself certainly seems to be.

But then again, if the first one sells well you could produce a series, "Cabinet War Rooms" "Starship UK" "The crack beside Craig Owens' fridge" "The one that killed Rory" and a giant sized special "The Byzantium crack".

Sounds bonkers but you'd be amazed what us fans will buy. You should see our houses.

Take care,

Stuart.

Send.

Steven Moffat has changed his mind.

TV Just for the record, Steven Moffat has changed his mind:

“Well we have to ask the fundamental question ‘What is Doctor Who?’ What demand does it supply? What audience does it serve? Now, a few of you might not like what I’m going to say next. Grip the arms of your chair, grind your teeth and wrap your head around this … Doctor Who is a children’s programme. No ifs. No buts. Definitely!” -- Steven Moffat, Doctor Who Magazine, Issue 279, 30 June 1999

"The only drama the BBC will boast about are Merlin and Doctor Who, which are fine, but they're children's programmes. They're not for adults "And they're very good children's programmes, don't get me wrong, they're wonderfully written … but they are not for adults." -- Steven Fry during the Q&A after giving the Bafta Annual Television Lecture, 2010.

"It was designed specifically to be a family programme, that's what it's for." -- Steven Moffat, during the Q&A after a showing of Doctor Who's The Pandorica Opens.

For the record, I think they're both wrong and write. Doctor Who can be a children's programme, for families and even specifically target adults. It just depends who's writing it.

tragedy (beep) comedy (beep) history (beep)

Life Last night's trip to the theatre didn't entirely go off without a hitch. When Callow stepped onto the stage, we (we being the audience) could hear a weird, slightly subliminal beeping noise each time he spoke, rather like sound a mobile phone makes when someone is texting and doesn't know how to change the settings. Which continued through the whole of the first half.

(beep) Shakespeare was born in Strat (beep) He married Anne Hatha (beep) (beeep) (beeep) (fucking beeeep)

Usually when something like this happens, I always assume it's just me being me with my mild undiagnosed attention deficit and that it was simply an ambient noise, like the air-conditioning system behind me that no one else is paying attention to or bothered by and they didn't seem to as they laughed in all the right places. Yet it still ploughed onward.

... tragedy (beep) comedy (beep) history (beep) pastoral (beep) pastoral-comical (beep, beep) historical-pastoral (beep, beep) tragical-historical (beep, beep) tragical-comical-historical-pastoral (beep, beep, beep, beeeep)

As the house lights went up for the interval I asked my neighbours if they could hear it too.
"Oh good god yes, wasn't it annoying?" they said.
"I'm thinking of asking for a refund." I said. "It really was distracting."

As I headed to the foyer, I mentioned it to the sound department.

"We know" she said offering a look which said "I can hear it to, for the three hundredth time."
"What is it?"
And here it was ...
"Someone in the audience has a hearing aid which has malfunctioned and its interfering with the sound system."
"Is there nothing that can be done at your end?"
"No."

Since I had such a good night otherwise, on reflection it would seem churlish to attempt to rip off the Playhouse for something outside of their control, especially since as I came into the auditorium during the interval, the staff were dashing about and making announcements trying to work out who was the source of the offending malfunction.

As the second half opened, and Callow stepped back onto the stage, clearly some of the audience were also waiting to see if the beep would have returned with him (beep). I can tell that because as he began roaring with no accompanying noise, there was an audible sigh of relief from somewhere to my left.

Shakespeare: The Man From Stratford at the Liverpool Playhouse.

In the programme for Shakespeare: The Man From Stratford, Simon Callow (in an excerpt from his autobiography available in the theatre foyer) offers a rather nice anecdote. Early in his career, he was asked by the National Theatre if he would like to be part of a show that offered all 154 sonnets in a single reading, presented as a kind of autobiographical show. In the “full flush of (his) youthful meglomania” he noted that if this was a single man’s life, it should be presented by one man – him. And so a series of shows ensued culminating in a sell out afternoon performance in which, as he stepped onto stage, he noticed Sir John Gielgud sat prominently, the veteran’s no doubt hawk-like gaze scaring the life out of him.

Instead of the sonnets, The Man from Stratford is, like his earlier The Mystery of Charles Dickens, a mad old mix of biographical lecture and rehearsed scenes, this time written by Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate. My admiration for Bate’s work washes over this blog like the waves on Prosporo’s island and in truth if you’ve already read his book Soul of the Age and any of his other writing on the subject you’re not going to find much new here. The script even replicates that book’s device of structuring the chapters of Shakespeare’s life about Jacques’s speech from As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage…”. But like the Bard’s plays and any good story, it’s worth hearing again and especially the capable hands and voice of Simon Callow.

Bate’s mission is to flesh out the details of the great man’s life to an audience who might not necessarily realise how much detail we have on him, from his parent’s years in Stratford to his schooling to his early marriage to London and how he ended up working in theatre to stardom to royal veneration back to Stratford to obscurity again and death. For all his genius, Shakespeare was a working man, pre-eminent certainly, but still one of dozens of writers functioning in that period, not in some ivory tower, his words drifting into the Globe like gold dust, which is the impression that has too easily developed across the century as his reputation has increased at the same exponential rate as our ignorance of his contemporaries some of whom haven't even been granted Complete Works collections.

Bate’s approach to scripting all of this is, like Shakespeare himself, to popularise things a bit. He calls Henry VI a “historical blockbuster” and “franchise” and when he talks about John Shakespeare’s financial problems it becomes an “Elizabethan credit crunch”. That’s smart, offering a vital link between the modern age and what can seem sometimes like a fictional land with little connection. He does fudge the chronology of the plays and often uses generalities like “he collaborated later in life” without always explaining with whom on what. But the writer also cleverly steers clear of the more obvious anecdotes like the destruction of the first Globe via canon during the premiere of Henry VIII in favour of the story of its construction (which I’ll not spoil since its one of the funniest moments in the evening).

What Callow brings as he dances about a relatively bare stage which includes just a chair and a few illustrative props, is his actorly ability to draw the audience in especially to the human moments; the death of Shakespeare’s son, the effects of disease, the glow of success. But its in the moments when Callow becomes a man possessed and enters the lives of Shakespeare's characters that the show is at its most entertaining, as we're gifted with a greatest hits of most of the main characters in the canon with the actor, age, gender and race hardly a barrier.  From Falstaff to Juliet, Callow just about manages, with the aid of some lighting effects and projections to suggest that we’re suddenly seeing excerpts of some other production.

In terms of Hamlet interest, that means the prince’s request for The Murder of Gonzago and extra lines to be inserted helps to explain how it's possible that the whole of Richard II could be revised overnight and an extra scene written ready to “inspire” the Earl of Essex’s rebellion and Polonius’s genre list demonstrates the scope of Shakespeare’s writing. But do not turn up expecting to hear Callow’s “To Be Or Not To Be”; for whatever reason Bate has decided to leave out arguably Shakespeare’s most famous speech which is probably just as well since it leaves room for Shakespeare's contribution to Sir Thomas More and it is a grand opportunity to hear something only recently canonised given a theatrical airing.

Even in these tiny excerpts of plays his whole demeanour changes and he tenses his facial muscles in an attempt to convey the nuclear emotions trapped within Shakespeare's text. He thunders red faced through Claudio’s fearful plea from Measure for Measure “Ah – but to die and go I know not where…” and becomes a symbol of nobility for Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach…”  It's impossible not to get caught up, and I did, almost in tears.  His Prospero is particularly powerful, the stage reduced to the glow of blue light, his Macbeth evoked by a shard of blood red and predictably by the close, amid the partial standing ovation, I was already making plans to dive back into the canon again.

Shakespeare: The Man From Stratford at the Liverpool Playhouse

In the programme for Shakespeare: The Man From Stratford, Simon Callow (in an excerpt from his autobiography available in the theatre foyer) offers a rather nice anecdote. Early in his career, he was asked by the National Theatre if he would like to be part of a show that offered all 154 sonnets in a single reading, presented as a kind of autobiographical show. In the “full flush of (his) youthful meglomania” he noted that if this was a single man’s life, it should be presented by one man – him. And so a series of shows ensued culminating in a sell out afternoon performance in which, as he stepped onto stage, he noticed Sir John Gielgud sat prominently, the veteran’s no doubt hawk-like gaze scaring the life out of him.

Instead of the sonnets, The Man from Stratford is, like his earlier The Mystery of Charles Dickens, a mad old mix of biographical lecture and rehearsed scenes, this time written by Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate. My admiration for Bate’s work washes over this blog like the waves on Prosporo’s island and in truth if you’ve already read his book Soul of the Age and any of his other writing on the subject you’re not going to find much new here. The script even replicates that book’s device of structuring the chapters of Shakespeare’s life about Jacques’s speech from As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage…”. But like the Bard’s plays and any good story, it’s worth hearing again and especially the capable hands and voice of Simon Callow.

Bate’s mission is to flesh out the details of the great man’s life to an audience who might not necessarily realise how much detail we have on him, from his parent’s years in Stratford to his schooling to his early marriage to London and how he ended up working in theatre to stardom to royal veneration back to Stratford to obscurity again and death. For all his genius, Shakespeare was a working man, pre-eminent certainly, but still one of dozens of writers functioning in that period, not in some ivory tower, his words drifting into the Globe like gold dust, which is the impression that has too easily developed across the century as his reputation has increased at the same exponential rate as our ignorance of his contemporaries some of whom haven't even been granted Complete Works collections.

Bate’s approach to scripting all of this is, like Shakespeare himself, to popularise things a bit. He calls Henry VI a “historical blockbuster” and “franchise” and when he talks about John Shakespeare’s financial problems it becomes an “Elizabethan credit crunch”. That’s smart, offering a vital link between the modern age and what can seem sometimes like a fictional land with little connection. He does fudge the chronology of the plays and often uses generalities like “he collaborated later in life” without always explaining with whom on what. But the writer also cleverly steers clear of the more obvious anecdotes like the destruction of the first Globe via canon during the premiere of Henry VIII in favour of the story of its construction (which I’ll not spoil since its one of the funniest moments in the evening).

What Callow brings as he dances about a relatively bare stage which includes just a chair and a few illustrative props, is his actorly ability to draw the audience in especially to the human moments; the death of Shakespeare’s son, the effects of disease, the glow of success. But its in the moments when Callow becomes a man possessed and enters the lives of Shakespeare's characters that the show is at its most entertaining, as we're gifted with a greatest hits of most of the main characters in the canon with the actor, age, gender and race hardly a barrier.  From Falstaff to Juliet, Callow just about manages, with the aid of some lighting effects and projections to suggest that we’re suddenly seeing excerpts of some other production.

In terms of Hamlet interest, that means the prince’s request for The Murder of Gonzago and extra lines to be inserted helps to explain how it's possible that the whole of Richard II could be revised overnight and an extra scene written ready to “inspire” the Earl of Essex’s rebellion and Polonius’s genre list demonstrates the scope of Shakespeare’s writing. But do not turn up expecting to hear Callow’s “To Be Or Not To Be”; for whatever reason Bate has decided to leave out arguably Shakespeare’s most famous speech which is probably just as well since it leaves room for Shakespeare's contribution to Sir Thomas More and it is a grand opportunity to hear something only recently canonised given a theatrical airing.

Even in these tiny excerpts of plays his whole demeanour changes and he tenses his facial muscles in an attempt to convey the nuclear emotions trapped within Shakespeare's text. He thunders red faced through Claudio’s fearful plea from Measure for Measure “Ah – but to die and go I know not where…” and becomes a symbol of nobility for Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach…”  It's impossible not to get caught up, and I did, almost in tears.  His Prospero is particularly powerful, the stage reduced to the glow of blue light, his Macbeth evoked by a shard of blood red and predictably by the close, amid the partial standing ovation, I was already making plans to dive back into the canon again.

Eyewitness: RSC, 1988

Mark Rylance has been interviewed by The Guardian about his life in theatre:

""When I played Hamlet," he remembers, "I added the word 'Ah!' five times after what are usually Hamlet's final words – 'The rest is silence.' And Ian McKellen sent me a letter to the stage door, saying, 'Now, now, darling, you really do have to be silent after those words.'" Sir Ian did not leave a return address, so Rylance was unable to write back to him and point out that the five dying susurrations are in the folio edition of the plays, printed seven years after the writer's death. Rylance believes that they were added in performance by Richard Burbage, the first Hamlet."

The Arden version of the folio has "O, O, O, O. Dies." But his point is made.

The modern equivalent of what he proposes are those printed editions of film scripts which are often transcripts of what occurred in the actual film rather than the screenplay even if an actor has paraphrased the words of the original writer and wrecked the sense.

But it does go to show that when you're playing this part, you don't have to just deal with the audience, there's also you're predecessors quietly judging you. Or not in McKellen's case.

fairly unequivical.

Film This is fairly unequivical. Helen O'Hara of Empire Magazine posts to their blog about how the Blu-ray pick-up has slowed and offering a range of potential reasons from consumers being quite happy with the picture and sound quality of dvd and other feeling like they're being treated like suckers having just spent the past ten years replacing VHS. And:

Blu-rays are big enough that they can hold as much information as you can throw at them - standard-setting releases like Blade Runner: Final Cut or Close Encounters come packed with every conceivable version of the film and every possible extra to boot. In other words, not just the standard DVD extras from the most recent release (or even a longer-ago release, or even fewer extras than the DVD boasted, as is the case with some Blu-rays) but specially-cut new material or long forgotten snippets. I know there's been a rush to get some films on to Blu-ray to boost the selection, but we need all discs to be up to this standard to make it worth shelling out for.

Usually when anyone writes anything about anything online, especially in relation to film, there's a sea of negative comments underneath. Not this time. In the comments section, the vast majority of people say that though they can see a boost in the picture quality its not enough for them to shell out and buy replacement copies of anything they've got and to only selectively buy new releases on blu-ray. I can only agree with them too.

Here is my blu-ray collection with some justifications:

Leon: Directors Cut
Replacing a VHS of the theatrical cut. In sale.

T2: Judgement Day: Directors Cut
Replacing a VHS. In sale.

The Dark Knight
Only film I've double dipped so that I could see the IMAX sequences within the film.

Starship Troopers 3
Dragon Wars
Presents. Oh yes.

Hamlet (Tennant)
Because I had to.

Hamlet (Olivier)
Henry V (Olivier)
Review copies.

Cinema Paradiso
Bought preview copy.

Torchwood: Children of Earth
Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead
Just see if BBC-HD is anything to write home about. It is. I'll be buying all Doctor Who releases in the best available format in the future.

Meanwhile I'm still purchasing other films on DVD and even the odd thing on VHS (Bill Forsyth's Being Human). But other than my favourite franchise I can't see myself buying many blu-rays in the future. Of course, it helps that it can be a format of rental choice at Lovefilm ...

Elsewhere Another day, another Hamlet. Mid-period Gielgud this time.

28 John Gielgud

Hamlet played by John Gielgud.
Directed by Michael Benthall *.

Listen to enough audio Hamlets in quick succession, as I have in this past week or so, despite the decades between recordings, and indeed despite the subtle differences in performance amongst the primary cast members, certain patterns, presumably due to theatrical tradition do emerge. Osric is usually effeminate. The Gravediggers mainly have outrageously rich regional accents, favouring cockney, sometimes welsh. Most often, when Fortinbras bids the soldiers shoot, they rarely do, the gunpowder replaced by a drum beast lest it damage the speakers.

So whenever something outrageously different happens, you really sit up and take notice. I’ll delve into the guts of this classic Old Vic production in a bit, but for a moment lets play with the packaging. Firstly, it has a narrator. John Rye appears throughout orientating the listener to the action to wit, the Gravedigger “Throws up bones and the occasional skull” (nice detail that) and listing the players in each given new scene “Meanwhile, Claudius and Laertes consult”.

The effect is rather like listening to some ancient recording of a radio commentary for a football match or if you’re that way inclined those cd releases of lost except on audio Doctor Who stories where a former companion fills in the gaps. Now and than Rye will even provide some extra context. In the early “council meeting” we’re advised that Hamlet is the “late king’s son. His claim to the succession has been overridden and he is not part of the council.” Between Acts One and Two we're told “Two months have passed.” That’s the first bit of excitement.

The second and indeed the one which led me to shout out happens at the top of Act 4, scene 5 when Rye intones, “Ophelia enters carrying a lute”. “A lute!” I shouted and having just read the recent Arden edition about the first Quarto and how the stage directions have impacted on later production, I shouted again “Q1’s lute!” which doesn’t sound syntactically possible, but it really is. Welcome to my world, right now. And sure enough Yvonne Mitchell’s otherwise fairly shrill Ophelia gives us a song or two which is close as the play gets to being a musical unless it's been recomposed by Ambrose Thomas.

A taping of the 1957 Old Vic Company production which is generally ignored in favour of the 40s recording done from the stage (the one featured in the Michael Almereyda film with Ethan Hawke and released by NAXOS). This is the version which is available on Spotify although the cassette I have sitting in front of me was released by Listening For Pleasure in 1977 and says misleadingly “playing time approx 2 hours” which it is give or take another couple of hours being a complete recording of an augmented Folio. Perhaps whoever did the art back then was under the impression it was an abridgement.

Either way, initially it seemed as though I was going to feel every one of those hours. The RP delivery kicks in within moments of the howling wind on the battlements and yet, even though this a production done for clarity rather than raw emotion (or perhaps because of it) the three and a half hours passed far more quickly than for the Renaissance Branagh. That left me an emotional wreck. This on the other hand left me noticing all kind of textual idiosyncrasies and seemed more like an intellectual journey.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I hadn’t considered before, for example, that no one actually tells Hamlet that Claudius is sending him to England even though he mentions it to his mother in the closet. Presumably the message has been passed in the meantime, but by whom, and when? Similarly, Claudius is very concerned about how his family’s trials seem to the general public. The initial reason he’s sending Hamlet to England is to convalesce and even after Polonius’s manslaughter, he’s keen to continue that impression:

I have sent to seek him, and to find the body.
How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Yet must not we put the strong law on him:
He's loved of the distracted multitude,
Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;
And where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd,
But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,
This sudden sending him away must seem
Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown
By desperate appliance are relieved,
Or not at all.

That’s the cult of celebrity right there, and the reason why VIPs seem to always receive less punishment in the eyes of the law. And this is a very regal family; the actor’s voices alone lay on the trappings of royalty and the impression of a once great household eating itself from within.

Gielgud’s performance does nothing to dissuade that. Having already played the part on a number of occasions since his debut at the Old Vic in 1929, he was already in his fifties at the time of this production (which was made when he’d just been engaged as leading man at the theatre) and the recognisable lispy antiquity has already begun to develop. If someone becomes synonymous with a role, does it change with each production or do the rest of the cast simply react to the star turning up to do their turn? Initially it seems as though he’s simply keen to go through the expected motions, the unhurried verbiage, the shaky trill during the set speeches, everything that’s expected of this Shakespearean who straddled across generations of different acting traditions.

He doesn’t even seem much madder after he’s met the Ghost than before and indeed he’s much the same figure even during the Fishmonger. Then, electrically, from almost nowhere, he finally bursts with passion during “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave” barking “Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!” with breathtaking vigour. Gielgud’s been modulating his emotion. He knows that if he begins with despair (as both Branagh and Tennant do later) if you’re not careful, you have nowhere else to go. Best to save it and frighten the audience (or in this case listener) out of their wits.

I think in this case he's taken the same view of the character as John Caird (who directed the 2000 RSC Simon Russell Beale) who suggests in the recent RSC edition that purely on a script basis, Hamlet's the sanest person in Elsinore, and any actor that begins to act the madness is working against the text. As everyone about him finds themselves in mad situations and react madly too, Hamlet is rational and becomes saner and saner as the play progresses and Gielgud's performance almost proves that. Even when Hamlet kills Polonius it's a defensive manoeuvre. He doesn't kill Claudius because is moral code forbids it. Laertes says he would kill someone in a chapel in an instant.

As for to the rest of the cast, Peter Coke (best known as Paul Temple on the radio) gives an emotionally complex Laertes who’s genuinely touching as he watches his sister’s sanity fall away. As Horatio, Jack Gwillim (Poseidon in Clash of the Titans) presents the stand up bloke, good in a fight, loyal. But the most fun are John Woodvine and Derek New as a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are Claudius’s lapdogs from the start, tersely dealing with Hamlet without a hint of loyalty like they’ve walked in from a Le Carré novel, entirely impatient when Hamlet breaks off from their passage to England to have a chat with the Captain and obviously clear about what their mission is about. When Hamlet has them killed, for once, you share his lack of remorse . . .

* The box neglects to mention who the director is. Michael Benthall directed Gielgud in a number of plays at the Old Vic at the time so I'm *assuming* it was him, but if you know different please correct me.

the narrative flow.

TV At some point in the none too distant future I'm going to treat myself to rewatching Angel and the late seasons of Buffy. As fans will know, because of the odd US broadcasting structure and the numerous crossovers, their narratives and neatly intertwined and to have the full impact they have to be watched together and thank goodness, Buffyfest has a useful watching guide:

"Although some may not agree, the narrative flow is actually better if you watch "Darla" BEFORE "Fool For Love" (or if you have any skill at math with regards to calculating Angel's age)"

Radical.

Romola on The Killer Inside Me

Film One of my favourite non-writers actress Romola Garai (non-writer as in doesn't write nearly enough) has contributed to a virtual round table on the subject of Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me for The Observer. Hers is the voice of reason:

"This whole debate is, of course, deeply self-indulgent, as most people won't see The Killer Inside Me or Antichrist. But for those that do, I don't think we watch films to agree with them but to engage with them. I don't think we shouldn't make films like these and I don't think we shouldn't see them."

Exactly. Antichrist is a horrible film, difficult to watch and yes, self-indulgent. But I still feel strengthened by the experience (as with any film I actively dislike) because it stops me from simply being a passive observer.

Elsewhere I keep expecting Shakespeare to pop in from nowhere Annie Hall-style and start badgering me about the quality of my writing. "You know nothing about work" or as in his case "Your aspect betrays your ignorance" or some such. Anyway, I've reviewed another Branagh.

27 Kenneth Branagh

Hamlet played by Kenneth Branagh.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh and Glyn Dearman.

When a radio production opens with the sound of Francisco pissing up a wall, giving his line “For this relief much thanks” a double meaning, you know you’re going to be listening to something rather special. A 1992 recording for Radio 3 by The Renaissance Theatre Company of a version of the 1988 staging, directed by Kenneth Branagh in conjunction with radio producer Glyn Dearman, this presents the full text and has one of the greatest casts I’ve seen outside of Branagh’s own film, including Derek Jacobi, Richard Briers, Judi Dench, Sophie Thompson, John Gieldgud, Michael Hordern, Michael Elphrick and one Emma Thompson.

Though this has similarities with that film, especially Branagh asking long term collaborator Patrick Doyle to offer some orchestration (though the music cues would not be carried over), Dr. Russell Jackson’s engagement as the text consultant and with some very cinematic audio design, this is by no means an audio animatic. With mostly a different cast and alternative thematic underpinnings, within moments it’s entirely possible to put the celluloid imagery to one side and simply allow this alternative version to wash over you or as happened in my case strike me in the guts. Audio productions rarely move me, yet by the end of these three and a half hours I was despondent, depressed and even teary. Job done, then, Mr Branagh.

Whereas in the film, Hamlet’s generally sane and regal and angry rather than even feigning madness, here we find a much more visceral presence apt to shift off into moments where he's entirely unhinged ("the conscience of the king" is a particular showcase). But there are moments of intimacy with the listener and in the booklet that accompanies the cassettes which includes interviews with all of the main players, Branagh says that he’s trying to create the impression of the prince thinking the set speeches. He achieves this by removing the background sound effects -- except during “To Be Or Not To Be…” in order to show that, as in the later film, he’s performing for Claudius and Polonius, secreted nearby.

Branagh takes the most relish and particular care during The Mousetrap. The extended text allows him to enunciate Hamlet’s disdain about how the visiting theatre company is being set aside in town in favour of the new fashion for child acting companies (a real issue in Shakespeare’s day). Michael Hordon’s Player King gives full richness to the text from Pyramous (bringing to mind his turns as Prospero). The whole duration of the dumb show is included with explanatory sound effects and audience reactions – though I wonder how clear this sequence would be with someone new to Hamlet. Either way this is one of the richest treatments of the players I've heard so far. Not least because ...

Emma Thompson is the Player Queen. In the booklet interview, she notes that usually the play within a play “is acted very hammily” which its inferred has the knock on effect of making it comical (perhaps to approach head-on boys playing girls as suggested by Shakepeare in the text), distracting us from what the scene is about. “Claudius" she says, "has to be touched and frightened by what he sees”. This is a rare occasion when the emotional truth of The Murder of Gonzago is fully explored and their arcane predicament almost becomes as compelling as the play outside the play, which means that the King's later confessional is all the more truthful.

This is a production replete with such excellent choices. Gieldgud’s Ghost, whose ancient voice suggests that he’s being broadcast live from purgatory, his disembodied monotone at odds with Branagh’s emotional reaction, Hamlet heard whimpering throughout. In the closet scenes, when Polonius cries out he actually sounds like Claudius making Hamlet’s mistake all the more plausible – usually we have to trust that the Prince just isn’t in his right mind which is why he’s stabbing someone who plainly doesn’t sounds like some old duffer. Doyle’s music plays at length between acts allowing the listener a moment to consider what they’ve just heard, the audio equivalent of the scene changes in the theatre.

The recording even makes its presence felt by appearing on four cassettes, eight sides, despite only being about half an hour longer than the ’77 Jacobi version. Listening to the two in quick succession as I did, its possible to hear the progression in technique, perhaps a small increase in psychological complexity, but now and then I did get a feeling of déjà vu as the Jacobi's influence asserted itself in a line reading (“The cup, the cup”) or playing of a scene (Laertes storming the castle, the rabble cascading through the speaks). But mostly this a chance to catch one of those watershed moments with three generations of Hamlet in one production this s a great theatrical event and a celebration of the play.

The Lodger.

TV God, I hate James Corden the comedian. He’s one of the few comedians who along with Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr make me think “Oh god not him…” and turn the television channel over even if it’s a programme I quite like which has musical innuendo in the title. He’s smug, overheated and he’ll hammer a joke until it has lost all its mirth and then continue perhaps for minutes in the hopes that it’ll reach some kind of a renaissance and we’ll start laughing (evidenced by the CGI football monologue in tonight’s Doctor Who Confidential). I’m sure he’s one of the reasons I watch less television than ever and I’m not surprised that Patrick Stewart took umbrage at his very existence, and respect the veteran Shakespearean even more for doing so via a slightly hammered reputational suicide mission at the podium of an awards ceremony.

But paradoxically, I quite like James Corden the actor. True, with the odd exception that shall remain nameless, he’s essentially spent much of his career playing the same character, but the character is a meaningful microcosm of post-millennial angst representing men of a certain age who left school with all kinds of hopes and dreams but saw them drift away in a morass of technological and recessional paralysis. Not that I’m saying that I know anyone who’s remotely like that. His turn in The Lodger is further evidence of this; as soon as Craig fumbles with the pizza leaflet in an attempt to hide his love for Sophie, and Corden pouts, we immediately love him which means that when the Doctor connects with his simple, ordered existence we’re entirely engaged and want to see how they bounce off one another.

Storywise, Gareth Roberts’s The Lodger shares a general synopsis with Paul Cornell’s Human Nature: the Doctor must live amongst humans. But as if to expostulate the Frank Carson theorum, whereas the former was a complex meditation on what piece of work man is, his nobility and reason, this was a delightful spin on the 80s sitcom Perfect Strangers albeit with Mork dropping through the front door rather than a Mediterranean stereotype. On first inspection perhaps, something of a departure for Roberts, best known on the television version of Doctor Who for his celebrity historicals. But his work on The Sarah Jane Adventures demonstrated that he has the facility for placing contemporary characters in unusual situations, the kind of thing which doesn’t requite a Pixley-like attention to historical detail.

I wasn’t a fan of the original comic strip at first because in order for it to work, the Tenth Doctor’s eccentricities had to be exaggerated to such a degree that they became out of character for the incarnation with the greatest of empathies for the human condition (“Chops and gravy” etc). It wasn’t until I realised that in telling the story from Mickey’s point of view, Roberts was showing us our favourite spaceman from a human perspective, albeit a human who wasn’t completely averse to walking with aliens himself, that the action made sense. It was always a great shame that the Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who couldn’t have found space for tv version; Noel Clarke would clearly have enjoyed the change of pace for Mickey put front and centre for a change rather simply the tin dog.

In renovating the story for the Eleventh Doctor, Roberts was able to take advantage of an incarnation for whom eccentricity is a way of life, the bow-tied man who isn’t convinced of Terran etiquette and balanced the point of view. Outside of the giant time flow analogue (Robert Slowman and Barry Letts's patent pending presumably) and targeted word salad, Eleventh was finally shown to be as adept as Ninth and Tenth in indirectly inspiring humanity to rise above itself. From the moment he saw Craig and Sophie and their key obsessions, he understood their simple yet infinitely complex emotional relationship and knew that the only way that the boy would do anything about the girl would be to give him something to fight against, the kind of mundane arch enemy Amy referred to half a century ago in Victory of the Daleks (is it just me or has this series seemed to go on far longer than any of the others even without the Eurovision break in the middle?).

As in the previous episode, this made much of its limited cast. Checking through her internet movie database entry, it quickly becomes apparent that the reason I haven’t alighted on Daisy Haggard’s charms before is because I’ve somehow managed to miss her entire career, other than her turn as the voice of a lift in a Harry Potter film and a key character called Donna in Ashes To Ashes #jamecordensfault. If her Sophie was anything to go by, I’ve probably missed much. Like a benign Donna Noble she was also required to be instantly likeable and approachable and very real; her relationship with Craig and the Doctor brought to mind another Daisy in a very different flatshare related sitcom, and Haggard tapped into that, her and Corden embodying that kind of nervous comfort that develops between friends when one of both of them is besotted. Not that again I’m saying that I know … you get the idea.

On Amy’s Choice, I suggested that director Catherine Morshead had deliberately worked against the dream-like quality of the script and given that episode a more mundane style but sadly because of this week’s material, she wasn’t given much of a chance to demonstrate anything else. Too wild and wacky visual elements would not have worked in these locations though it’s worth noting how fluidly, unwittingly or not, she mimics the “realistic” feel of a more typical BBC drama in the scene about Craig or Sophie then contrasts that with a more hand-held, fractured framing for the Doctor and Amy as though we are watching two different series stitched together. The treatment of the hologram up stairs was effectively creepy especially in the shot when Craig visited only to find the old man on the edge of his vision, his silhouetted figure tantalisingly close.

Elsewhere, time is out of joint. Earlier today, I tweeted the wacky suggestion, based on a future synopsis, that it would be revealed that the man at the top of the stairs was some future version of the Doctor having trouble with his blue box. Not in my wildest dreams did imagine I would be half right. This DIY SOS time machine was a stunning piece of design, exactly as I’d imagine the Master’s TARDIS would have been in days or yore if a budget had dropped through the vortex into Barry Newbery (or whoever’s) lap in a brown paper back (assuming it could be sneaked onto the BBC’s accounts). He’d certainly have gone for the plasma balls as a design feature, though the lighting designers might have baulked at the determined monotone and filled the thing with spotlights (with Mat Irvine storing up twenty-years worth of resentment ready to complain about it on a dvd commentary). What was this egg shaped version of Scaroth’s ship and will we see it again?

Perhaps because of the tone of the rest of the episode, one element that went unexplored was the deaths of those seventeen innocents whilst the Doctor could not make up his mind about visiting the room at the top of the stairs. In the preceding era, they would have been standing around outside the newly bungalowed house vacantly wondering what had happened to them then cheering in the Doctor’s direction for no realistic reason other than to give Murray Gold a chance to insert “climactic burst of emotion cue #3” onto the soundtrack. In The Lodger, they stayed dead, from child to pensioner, from the bedraggled to the bored. It’s another instance of this series experimenting against the franchise’s usual philosophical attitude, embodied in its companions, that we should strive to leave and seek something different and exciting, which usually leads to hijinks and adventure but now just seems to get you killed.

Speaking of which I can’t tell if Amy was thinking at the close of this episode “Rory. Who’s Rory?” or “Oh for fuck’s sake, Doctor, make up your mind.” Shot in the same block as Amy’s Choice, whereas that episode knocked the Doctor out for some of its duration and brought in a substitute, The Lodger traps Amy in the TARDIS which meant we got to see her best LeVar Burton talking to a disembodied voice acting. A lot. Luckily she was very good at the LeVar Burton talking to a disembodied voice acting and acting in general, making Amy utterly compelling even when she’s simply shouting and draping herself nervously backwards across the TARDIS console. Still, her general absence in the episode led to the rather wonderful Karen in Greenwich sequences in BBC Three’s premiere science documentary strand, culminating in her obvious delight in seeing Saturn in real time. Part of me wished she’d done it in character, but across the weeks, despite what I just said about the acting, the gap between where Amy starts and Karen finishes has perceptionally diminished exponentially.

Whatever, even with the football sequences (the badinage about which I’ll leave to someone more qualified and I don’t mean the collective on Football Focus), The Lodger was another superb episode that left me feeling warm and fuzzy in a season with perhaps the highest unconditional goal rate yet. It even managed to make the crack in the wall look like a proper structural defect of the kind you tend to find in buildings of a certain age, providing an ensuing montage as if to prove the point. And what of the trailer for next week? If the voiceover sounded like someone playing an amateur version of the lottery gameshow Who Dares Wins at a convention (with Matthew Waterhouse rather than Nick Knowles waiting for some smart arse to hit the thirty-three answers he's been saddled with) the rest offered what will be the most atypical finale yet, with a range of period settings, no global contemporary threat that requires Trinity Wells or celebrity cameos (as far as we can tell) and a general impression of a narrative working up to a conclusion rather than a last minute interjection of plot. All I could think was, what will the prolls make of this?

Next Week: We discover how literally Steven is interpreting Greek myth. Will someone, to paraphrase that great organ of learning, the wikipedia, "overcome by curiosity, open the Pandorica, release the evils contained into the world, then unable to close it again save but one thing: hope"?

a window into the theatre going experience of the 70s

Elsewhere I've semi-reviewed Derek Jacobi's seminal seventies stage performance as Hamlet, as heard in tape. Some of you might be entertained by the connected theatre programme which, as a said there, offers a window into the theatre going experience of the 70s:

26 Derek Jacobi

Hamlet played by Derek Jacobi.
Directed by Toby Robertson.

I’m signed up to the local Freecycle service and a couple of years ago someone was giving away bags and bags of old theatre programmes and posters. I had thought before visiting that they would be for the local area but they turned out to be from the West End and outer London and to my great pleasure for this legendary Old Vic production of Hamlet with Derek Jacobi originated in 1977/8, put on tape in 1979 and released by Argo on cassette a couple of years later.

The programme itself is a treat, but you can see that for yourself because I’ve uploaded photos of the pages to flickr (albeit using my rubbish digital camera). There’s a celebratory feel, perhaps because this was seen as a triumphant return, with photographs of Hamlets from previous Old Vic productions stretching as far back as Ernest Milton in 1921 and a history of the theatre itself. The advertising too offers a microcosm of the life of theatre-goers in that period:



As with the recording of the RSC production with Tennant, reading the programme beforehand certainly put me in the right mood, helped by the fact that as with many of the programmes she gave me, the previous owner has written a short review of the show in the back along with a note about the audience. This was a return appearance after an international tour and her words suggest that some elements had changed in the meantime:

30th Jan 78

Performance dulled a little. Jacobi not quite as carefree (colourful?). Directorial difference only. Humour more masked. Ophelia back to traditional portrayal. Wymark the besotted girl, as opposed to Bertish the sophisticate. Not so interesting. Bertish added extra level to the play. […] Audience were more responsive. Picking up all the humour quickly. Small house but a relaxed audience.

Reading these contemporary professional reviews and the account from the book Modern Hamlets and their soliloquises reveals that the show had a messy stage history, beginning as a truncated version (the programme suggests the Folio text with cuts suggested by the first Quarto) with a much praised Ophelia in Suzanne Bertish and a clear indication that she and Hamlet were very much having a sexual relationship – it’s this version that Kenneth Branagh saw and convinced him that theatre was the life for him.

A few months later the production, retaining most of the same cast, was extended to a fuller length (reinstating amongst other things “How all occasions” according to director Tony Robertson), with Jane Wymark, who appears in this audio version, replacing Bertish and offering a much more subdued, chased version. My donor was obviously keen to compare and contrast and obviously preferred the earlier production which seems to be the reverse of the audience she was sitting with! Without a point of comparison I will at least propose that Wymark’s Ophelia is a bit traditional but not bland.

What is notable is how physical this audio production is. Though this obviously can't be a complete replication of the stage production, what we have here is a well rehearsed cast giving a performance rather than simply rehearse/reading from a script which often happens with audio productions. Care has been taken to place the characters within a definite space, with some scenes conducted some way from the microphone forcing them to offer theatrical projection making this a very visceral listen. Only during the soliloquies do the actors take advantage of the intimacy reducing their timbre of their voices to a whisper.

Perhaps its because of that Jacobi is a more passionate Hamlet than the man he became in the later 1980 BBC Shakespeare production, his voice shifting constantly between octaves as if to indicate the frequency of his madness (for he doesn't just fein madness, he nudges off the cliff) through sound alone. After discovering the reality of his father’s death, he offers a gutteral scream which made my tape player tremble and one can only imagine the physical power he must have had on stage. His Hamlet bawls as he drags away the guts of Polonius, well aware that his moral code is broken and that he's now no better than the man he despises.

Only in the late scenes, when Hamlet knows the moment has passed and there's little he can do does Jacobi rightly sober up, as if to indicate that he understands that he can no longer fight against the inevitable, “The readiness is all”. But by then the rest of the cast have shifted up a gear to join him. Timothy West’s Claudius (which is new to this audio replacing John Turner) is an impatient, irascible figure unable to keep his true emotions from cracking through the surface. If his treatment of Gertrude after the death of Polonius is any indication he must be horrible company.

Frequently with productions, especially on audio, a fatigue sets in during the latter stages, especially if I’m listening in one session, which is usual. Not so here. Even as Hamlet began to describe his relationship to Yorrick I began to question what I was hearing and for the first time I noticed – Horatio knows about the effect Polonius’s death has had on Ophelia – it is he who convinced Gertrude to meet Ophelia -- but has he told Hamlet? The Danish prince’s good, if melancholic humour just before the funeral suggests not, in which case, why now? I asked Metafilter and along with some of the criticism I've subsequently looked at, no one seems to have a definitive answer.

Also keeping my interest in these late stages are Laertes’s proper mob, the room suddenly filling with dozens of voices which is rare. Barbara Jefford’s regal Gertrude who appears to tell Hamlet what he needs to hear but breaks down just after he leaves her. And the other casting interests which include Trevor Martin as the Norwegian Captain, the older version of whom I saw in As You Like It at the Globe last year and one Oz Clarke, future wine critic, then actor, offering a rather good aristocratic Oscric neatly holding his own against Jacobi's sarcastic wit.

Given the historical elements of the programme there is one other notable moment. As I intimated, much of the play betrays the influence of the method and despite its age, none of these performances would be out of place now. Except for during The Mousetrap, when both actors revert to the style of an earlier age (which I’ve previous heard in the Paul Scofield starring version) of the emotional trill as if to demonstrate how far they’ve come. This proved to be an influential production (full story), and perhaps part of that is because it already understood its place within theatrical history.