Radio The schedules for the opening few weeks of next year have opened up at the BBC website, including for Radio Four Extra, including news that another set of Big Finish's Eighth Doctor audios are to be broadcast, from the fourth series, from the 7th January onwards.
So far, Death in Blackpool, Situation Vacant, Nevermore, The Book of Kells and Deimos have been scheduled and since that last one is the beginning of a two parter there's every possibility that they'll be running them through to the end since there are still five days worth, enough for the following week. Excellent.
Lost.
TV The BBC's live transmission of the 1947 production of Jack and the Beanstalk from the Croydon Grand was a logistical nightmare that led to innumerable problems:
"Monday evening, 6 January, came around, with the plan being to transmit the first half of the pantomime from 6.45 to 8.25pm. At 5.00pm that afternoon the OB transmitting van was working perfectly, but soon afterwards a fault appeared. According to a detailed technical report compiled in the wake of what he described as ‘a double disaster’, assistant chief engineer R. T. B. Wynn wrote, ‘This fault was intermittent [...] and conditions of darkness, weather and cramped space made the location of the fault and clearance of it extremely difficult.’ The whole broadcast was lost."
Review 2012: The Projects:
Film Lists.
Film As ever this year brought several film viewing projects. There’s the Sight and Sound 2012 poll, which surprised me in two ways, both because I’d already seen all of the top ten (apart from La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) and because they manage to be both innovative and thoroughly entertaining at the same time, something not all of the other two hundred and forty films voted below them can claim. Too often the so-called “canon” puts artifice and innovation above watchability, leaving the viewer having to wade through three hours of dull lighting. Which isn’t going to stop me from wading through the next 240. Having reviewed both, I should add that in no way is Vertigo a better film than Citizen Kane, a work which still maintains most of its thematic resonance seventy years later.
Having decided Anne Hathaway was the best thing about The Dark Knight Rises, I’ve also set about working my way through her career, which meant finally sitting through Bride Wars. Predictably she’s the best thing about that too just as she manages to elevate other less than promising material like Havoc and Passengers. She’s a rare example of a teen actress capably managing the shift into mature fare, though it’s also true that disappointingly her only film with any real indie sensibilities is Rachel Getting Married, even though she’d be excellent at mumblecore (which that isn't quite). About the only film she can’t save is One Day, mainly because as with most films of that ilk (and like Love and Other Drugs actually), the writers and director are determined to tell the whole thing from the man’s perspective.
Plus there’s the ongoing attempt to make sure I watch anything that’s been nominated for an award at a smattering of ceremonies. Due to the sheer volume of film content produced each year and not wanting to bother too much with spoilery reviews, I’ve taken to adding (as a priority) to my Lovefilm list any film nominated for anything at the Oscars, Baftas, Golden Globes and Cannes as well as the yearly lists from Empire, Sight and Sound Magazine and Mark Kermode. Sometimes this consensus approach leads me to snoring through the likes of Act of Valor because it received a best song nod, but it does at least mean I feel like I’m seeing most of anything of (general) regard in a year, with only the Golden Globes throwing in a few bogies in the comedy and musical categories.
Lovefilm is still my main source of cinematic exposure having been inside an auditorium precisely thrice, for Cabin in the Woods, The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit all spoiled to some degree by the nearby inconsiderate audience members with their food and their mobile phones. If the internets hadn’t been having a spoilergasm over them I wouldn’t have bothered, though as it turned out I probably should have seen The Avengers too, its biggest surprise accidentally ruined on the same day I received the boxed set, such are the dangers of following the blu-ray release dates for films rather than theatrical. None of which stops me from still listening to the Kermode podcast each week, even if I’ve generally forgotten what he’s said by the time I receive the shiny discs in the post. Watch out for my top ten soon.
WHO 50: 1967:
Tomb of the Cybermen.
“I wonder what he would have thought if he could see me now.”
TV Another Cyberman story, another remarkable moment which has almost nothing to do with them.
When Doctor Who was revived, much of the commentary pointed to how much of the series was refreshingly about the characters, the so-called soapier aspects, of the Doctor dealing with survivor guilt, Rose tied to her home and their romance.
This as though the first run lacked all of these things, as though everything was about the plot, the characters one-dimensional automations.
Whilst it’s true across the two and a half decades, such elements oscillated in importance, there are still many scenes in which the characters consider their relationships to one another and their unique position (as was the case then) as time travellers in the fourth dimension.
Sometimes, often, these were clustered around major events, companions joining or leaving, a regeneration.
But sometimes, they would be in the midst of an adventure, just as now, and in their own way all the more powerful because it.
Here’s a quiet moment from Tomb of the Cybermen.
It’s extraordinary for a number of reasons, not least the performances, Patrick and Deborah demonstrating that he wasn’t simply playing the clown and she the screamer.
It’s the two of them sharing their pasts with each other and the viewers and not in a glib way, not for example, the Time Lord name dropping or Jamie emphasising his Scottish heritage.
It’s them talking about their relative losses, the ancient man whose escaped his home world, the girl who watched her father die.
Her acknowledging that he could be a potential father figure, him communicating that their mission goes beyond that:
"Our lives are different to anybody else’s. That’s the exciting thing. Nobody in the universe can do what we’re doing."Arguably all of his best companions since have understood that too. Embodied it.
Then it’s time for Victoria to sleep, the Doctor to keep watch.
Review 2012: The Projects:
Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who: Assimilation 2, issue #8.
Comics Ho, ho, bloody ho. Last week the writers of what is, without shadow of a doubt, one of the worst comic representations of either of these franchises ever were interviewed by Comic Book Resources. As Allyn suggested when tweeting me the link, "you may have an aneurysm". He was quite right. Everything you need to know about what went wrong with Assimilation2 is in there especially their lack of knowledge of Doctor Who, which they differente from Star Trek as being “science fantasy” not “science fiction” as though fantasy and fiction are opposite words and transporters seem more plausible than a machine that travels through time. They admit that Star Trek is easier for them because they’ve been writing in that universe for much longer, which explains why they probably hadn’t realised that it exists as a television programme within the Whoniverse which explains why at no point has the Doctor, Amy or Rory said, “Oh my god we’re in the Star Trek universe”. Though frankly that’s been the least of its worries.Bizarrely this series has had its fans. The writers indicate they’ve “done convention and bookstore signings over the course of the year, everyone has been super-friendly and complimentary. I think it comes through that we love both these properties and are trying to do right by both.” The solitary comment on the interview says, “As a fan of both shows, I really loved this series. Well done and thanks to everybody involved. As you all did a great job on it, that you should be really proud of! Loved it!” Which is fine, really. Everything is a matter of taste after all. Just because I think that this is empirically and provably rubbish doesn’t mean that someone else can’t consider that it’s an unutterably flawless work of genius. The writers certainly seem to be pleased with themselves. But for all CBR’s indication this has been a critical success, I’ve not found many reviews which are more than at least luke-warm. Starburst hates it as much as I do. Forbidden Planet uses phrases like “frustratingly uneven”.
Spoilers, spoilers, this is another synopsis. So what do we have behind the Kirby homaging cover with the baby-faced Doctor and orgasmic Worf? An extended action sequence, the issue begins with a cliffhanger resolution and the wrongness begins pretty much immediately with Amy utilising one of her three lines in the issue (“All right.”) in agreeing to provide covering phaser fire for Worf and some other security guards as they go in to sabotage the CyberBorg ship’s engines (her other lines are, spoilers, “Bye!” and “Just hope what?”). That’s Amy Pond. With a phaser. Providing covering fire for a Klingon and some security guards. Rory warns that they’re not trained marksmen. Worf suggests they’ll “do fine”. Not that we get to see this because they cutaway to the sabotage so we don’t actually see them fire at anything, which is probably for the best. If this was being acted by Karen and Arthur they’d probably be a bit grumpy, though Rory has more things to say and has an exciting moment with a door later.
Three pages later we’re back with the Doctor, Picard, Data and Riker’s Borgfriend, or friend who is a Borg (though he doesn’t appear in a frame for two pages) facing up to the CyberBorg hoards. After a page or two considering how they’re going to get past them to reach the CyberController, they’re captured anyway (which means those two pages look particularly wasteful with just twenty-two to play about with), then released again when the ship is eradiated with gold dust by the Enterprise. Once again we ask when it was established in nuWho that the nuCybermen were vulnerable to gold (not that you can’t introduce tropes in spin-off fiction but this seems incongruous). Then Picard suddenly has a translucent face-mask on to stop him breathing in the fumes. This just appears between frames. We can imagine he whipped it out of his pocket, but Starfleet uniforms aren’t known for them and no one has a bag. Where did they come from? Note the Doctor doesn’t have one. He’s holding a hanky up to his nose, which barely seems adequate.
After that, they go and see the Cyber-controller, whose a surprisingly articulate bugger. Cyber-controllers so far on the revival have been characters we’ve come to know who’ve been converted (cf, The Age of Steel, The Next Doctor) and this fella is in that realm, but his dialogue closer to the classic form ala Earthshock, with lots of fist clenching and poetic threats. He spends most of his monologue confirming what we already know from previous issues about the Cybermen converting the Borg, before he’s quickly neuralized by Data and the Riker’s Borgfriend, and the Doctor uses him to finish blowing up the ship and the Cybermen with it. We’re now at page sixteen. At no point have we been surprised, much, by any of this and what we’ve been watching/reading/snoring through is a well-executed plan. Good god, it’s boring, apart from, perhaps the dynamic moment at the bottom of page eleven with the Cyber-controller seems to leap off the ground and hover over the Doctor with Picard standing nearby with a mean look on his face waving around a phaser rifle.
Everyone safely into the TARDIS. But wait, Riker’s Borgfriend has made it on board and reverting back to his programming is attempting to assimilate the time machine. At least I think that’s what’s happening. He’s sort of squatting nearby and the next moment the TARDIS is attempting to possess Data in an attempt to save itself. Again, what could and should be a big moment of joy is pissed away in a few frames before Rory’s exciting bit with a door is handed a page and a half. I keep returning to the narrative real estate portioning because over and again the writers can’t seem to decide how this story should be paced. There’s enough mileage in Data interfacing with the TARDIS to fill a whole issue and in a more interestingly structured series it would. But over and again across these issues, the more fascinating ideas with the most potential are put to the backburner in favour of repeated exposition or action sequences that merely set out to mimic what’s already been shown on television.
With two and a half pages to go, the writers tip their hand as Trek fans first of all by giving a whole page to an admittedly well executed scene about Riker coming to terms with the change in his Borgfriend via a conversation with Crusher (who seems to have been drawn in accidentally because its more of a Troi moment) and then the TARDIS crew turn up to tell them they’re going home and explain that simply by destroying this one ship they’ve wiped all the Cybermen from the timeline including the ones who appeared with the Baker version of him in issue 3. But thankfully we’re not left with much time to think about the nonsensicality of this because they’re all suddenly in the Holodeck and Picard’s telling the Doctor to fuck off out of his universe is so many words (“I hope our paths never cross again”) before telling him he’s glad to have met him (oh make up your mind). Then we’re back in the TARDIS for a single frame of wrap up in which Sean Penn in Shanghai Surprise tells his companions that universe skipping will be a breeze. Oh course it will.
In the final frame, as I predicted somewhat previous, there’s the suggestion of a sequel as the Borg come to the conclusion that they must develop time travel, though that could just as well be a throw forward to First Contact (which had its own crossover sequel featuring the X-Men as a comic and novel when Marvel had the rights) (which makes it astonishing that it hasn’t crossed over with Batman yet because everything else has) (presumably it’ll happen if DC get the rights again) (everyone but Dark Horse seems to have had them at one point or other) (there was a weird moment in the late 80s when Marvel UK were publishing a comic then a magazine of Star Trek: The Next Generation carrying DC’s material) (a complete run of which I still have somewhere) (in the original Marvel run produced early in the run of the tv series the helm officers were a married couple who’d bicker all the time) (seriously, they're called the Bickleys) (and Wesley saved the ship in practically every story) (which is a pretty accurate reflection of the television series itself in that period to be honest).
And we’re done. Given the cack-handed way the previous seven issues have been executed we shouldn’t be too surprised the finale is as perfunctory as it is with weird pacing, pointless pages of stuff prosaically showing us action which would take seconds on screen and yet more repeated exposition. Once again, the Eleventh Doctor rarely sounds like himself, with vast generic infodumps instead of fun dialogue and the Enterprise crew largely reduced to being his companion leaving his actual companions without much to do. The artwork’s better than usual, with some nice shading and rendering of publicity photos though there’s one flashback frame featuring Riker with his Borgfriend (who actually looks more like Geordi) in younger happier times in which the artist has remembered not to give him a beard but puts them both in s3 uniforms when, to my understanding, the scene has to have been set before s1 when spandex was very much in for the officer about town.
As expected, there’s a few loose ends, primarily the guff at the beginning about the Doctor gaining memories from the Trekverse, of recognising Worf and his earlier encounter with the Kirk. In his late infodump, the Doctor says the memory banks of the ship should have gone back to normal, but that their own memories are there’s to keep. Does this mean the Doctor now has a mass of useless knowledge in his head about a reality not his own? Has it been adequately explained how they got there? I don’t remember that it has. Allyn, do you know? What was the point of introducing this rather exciting idea then doing almost nothing with apart from justifying a whole issue telling a different story with a different cast two issues in? I’d expected a Fringey moment when the Doctor and his companions forgot that they’d ever existed in a different universe and that the Tholians rather than the Daleks were his mortal enemy. Alas, it was not in the nature of this series to make to such a dramatic narrative leap.
Instead, what could have been an excellent crossover has been squandered and after seeing the amazing initial shots of the Doctor in the Captain’s chair in command of the Enterprise we’re left with a deflated sense of what could and should have been. From a first issue which materially had nothing to do with the rest of the series (and seems to have largely acted as an audition for the next big project for the writers, a series of Who comics to commemorate the 50th year of Doctor Who) (no) (really) onwards across the following seven months (can you believe it?) we’ve had nothing but disappoint after disappointment and as the months have passed I’ve wondered why I was bothering. Yet, I’d still buy each issue hoping against hope that it would do something really extraordinary. More fool me. There’s another CBR interview with the writers worth reading conducted at the start of this process. At the close they’re asked, “would you be game to come back for a second series?” and they answer:
“Are you kidding? The Doomsday Machine and Dalek Imperial Fleet put together couldn't drag me away.”
Oh please god no.
[Allyn has a much rangier analysis of the whole series with more emphasis on its failings as a piece of Star Trek.]
Zeus.
Mythology "Visualising Zeus's infidelities: the Greek god's affairs as chronicled over the centuries, laid out as a graphic":
"A team of data-visualisation designers have created a fascinating graphic representation of the genealogy of Greek god Zeus. Dozens of authors have chronicled his relationships and offspring, with some of his lovers and children cited consistently, and others mentioned only in one or two accounts."
Orphan planets.
Space Orphan or rogue planets have become more than a theoretical possibility reports National Geographic. Scientists searching for dwarf planets, may have stumbled upon one such object, drifting through space:
"Compared with other potential homeless planets, the new candidate is also older, colder, and much closer to Earth—approximately 130 light-years away ...
"Called CFBDSIR2149, the suspected orphan planet appears to reside in a group of young stars, though it isn't gravitationally linked to any of them. This affiliation with the so-called AB Doradus Moving Group helped scientists estimate the planet's age: 50 to 120 million years old."
My Year Watching Shakespeare.
Shakespeare. Twenty-twelve was an excellent year for Shakespeare. Arguably, of course, every year venerates Bill to some degree but with the Cultural Olympiad deciding that he’s one our greatest exports, twenty-twelve was indeed an excellent year for Shakespeare. Not since the birthday celebrations in 1997, has there been such a focus across the media and in theatres, with the Shakespeare: Staging The World exhibition at the British Museum, the Globe to Globe season at the “replica” with all of the plays in various languages from visiting theatre groups, part of a World Shakespeare Festival.
But for those of us in the provinces, it was still a great year for accessible Shakespeare with his plays appearing across the BBC in various forms which was why at around March time I decided that I’d spend a portion of the year working my own way through the canon, with non-broadcast plays covered by other productions on film, video and audio I’d not had a chance to catch up with yet. So I printed off an alphabetical list and stuck it to my door, ready to be crossed off as I demolished each testament to man’s creative ingenuity. Plus as it turned out Geoffrey Wright’s disastrous gangster version of Macbeth with Sam Worthington in the title role.
Away from the many documentaries, the BBC’s first broadcast productions were on Radio 3. A stripped down production of Much Ado About Nothing appeared in the Afternoon on 3 slot designed to highlight the music Eric Korngold composed for a 1910s production with Daniela Nardini as Beatrice and Liam Brennan as Benedick and although it didn’t hold together as drama due to the brevity of the text it was a treat to hear Korngold’s music in situ and there was real chemistry between the stars despite them obviously reading the play in from a script. It's just a pity that it wasn't filmed as per an earlier A Midsummer Night's Dream which is still available to watch here.
On three Saturdays, the Drama on 3 slot brought Twelfth Night, Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest as well as a repeat of last year’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If the four shared anything other than cast members, it was atmosphere, especially Dream which was recorded on location in a Sussex woodland which meant the timber of the voices and footprints created an extra level of twilight magic (a production aided by Roger Allum’s excellent Bottom). David Tennant and Ron Cook bestrode the Night and Romeo in various roles with only The Tempest not quite holding together due to a confusing restructuring of the text. Epic Prosporo from David Warner though.
June brought BBC Four’s broadcast of the RSC’s then current production of Julius Caesar. Produced by Illuminations (whose previous work includes recordings of David Tennant in Hamlet and Patrick Stewart in Macbeth), their grand experiment was to record the play’s public scenes in the RSC theatre during a performance and intercut that with intimate moments shot on location in an abandoned shopping mall, an experiment didn’t quite work for me. The theatre scenes had a glorious energy, which wasn't quite replicated in the interior scenes at first, despite a magnetic Brutus performance from Paterson Joseph.
But it’s worth noting that Caesar isn’t my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays anyway. After a tremendous first few opening acts, it descends into a tedious miasma of skirmishes and spats but, and this is important, this production somehow managed to make those lucid and emotionally charged especially as the loyalties of the conspirators were wrought asunder. But I just couldn’t help, during the scenes artistically shot using iPhones wondering who was holding the camera and how they were able to get all of those angles. Nevertheless this was a bold statement on how television and theatre companies need not be deadly rivals.
Illuminations had begun planning on a recording of the RSC’s repertory of The Histories, but this was cancelled when the behemoth that was The Hollow Crown spun across the horizon. A filmic version of the first Henriad, this didn’t disappoint in entertainment terms with starry casts, incandescent photography and interconnected readings of the plays even if ambitious Saturday night scheduling during Wimbledon meant the audiences weren’t quite as huge as they deserved to be, watching Twitter on those evening revealed that casting Tom Hiddleston drew in a demographic that might otherwise be uninterested.
Of the four, Richard II was the most successful thanks to Ben Wishaw's mesmerising whisper though the title role and a determination to put the text to the forefront, especially during the John of Gaunt sections, where a slow push in did full justice to Patrick Stewart's enunciation of The Sceptred Isle. If anything, the Henry V was less successful due to its determination not to be anything like the Branagh film, rather than be its own thing and damn the similarities. But I was please to have seen been able to cross the rarely filmed Henry IVs of my list. Little did I know what was to come.
Hiddleston was actually the second Henry I’d seen of the year, the first being Jamie Parker’s boyishly regal version in the Globe’s touring production of Henry V which I wrote about at length here. Then, come August, I was hearing the play again along with a dozen others as part of the BBC Radio 4 Extras repeat of Vivat Rex, the twenty-six part mash-up of plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare and their contemporaries describing the history of the monarchy from Edward II through to Elizabeth I produced in 1977 to commemorate the Queen’s silver jubilee, now re-emerging in her Diamond year.
The series was gamely broadcast on weekday mornings for a month and I giddly recorded them all and listened to them across about four days, lost in the maze of words and history. In project terms it meant I somewhat heard my first production of Edward III, listed as anonymous then but subsequent “canonised” as at least a collaboration thanks to textual analysis. It also allowed me to include other playwrights in my personal festival, including expectedly John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck and the anonymous Thomas of Woodstock albeit in heavily truncated versions.
Which, as far as I can remember, was it for broadcast Shakespeare. But there was still another twenty-odd plays to cover, having disregarded The Two Noble Kinsmen due to only recently listening to the one available professional recording within months of starting to work through the canon in earnest and assuming that Vivat Rex had more than covered the shortfall. Luckily because I’m a fan with an overbearing collector gene, I’ve multiple copies of all the plays in various formats from different companies, so it was really just a matter of choosing what to listen to, thinned down somewhat by having to select productions I’d not visited yet.
So on my flat screen I saw Ralph Fiennes’s visceral Coriolanus, Trevor Nunn’s RSC production of King Lear with Ian McKellen facing off against Sylvester McCoy’s clown, Nunn’s The Comedy of Errors with Judi Dench curiously recorded in a studio with audience cutaways and pretence of having been shot in the RSC theatre, a bizarre 1983 Antony and Cleopatra with Timothy Dalton and Lynn Redgrave with Nichelle Nichols and Walter Keonig in minor roles, Tom Stoppard’s truncation of The Merchant of Venice presented by the National Youth Theatre in 1998 and a charming Taming of the Shrew from Canada’s CBC in the 1980s.
Audio is trickier. There are essentially four collections available; The 50s Marlowe Society in conjunction with the British Council released on Argo, the 60s Shakespeare Recording Society productions published by Harper Collins, the 90s Arkangel complete works directed by Clive Brill and the BBC radio versions produced in and around the millennium along with a smattering of classic radio releases. All share some extraordinary casting choices often dictated by contemporary productions but unfortunately they’re also incredibly inconsistent, demonstrating that even the best plays can be rendered unlistenable through bad choices.
In other words, while you might assume the Argo version of As You Like It and might be boring and bobbins and the Arkangel Troilus and Cressida a treat, the reverse is true, but its reversed again when comparing Argo’s unfunny Merry Wives of Windsor and Arkangel’s superb The Winter’s Tale. John Gielgud crops up as Time in the latter and can also be heard narrating their poignant Pericles, and it’s casting choices such as these which led me, despite their bland Cymbeline to defaulting to ArkAngel anyway. Their treatment of King John gives it the panto welly it needs, the Timon of Athens a clear, logical communication substituting the new National Theatre production I couldn’t get to.
Arkangel is also the place to go to hear a young Damien Lewis offer his Valentine in the neglected The Two Gentlemen of Verona (opposite Michael Maloney’s Proteus) and Harriet Walter’s expressive Tamora in Titus Andronicus. But eventually I had to resort the Argo with their rather neutral interpretation of Love’s Labour’s Lost and the HarperCollins Measure for Measure in which Sir Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton manage to drain their dialogue of all its subliminal bawdiness against which Gielgud’s Duke seems perfectly cast even if he doesn’t quite manage to emphasise the shiftiness inherent in the role.
There was a gap in the middle for the Olympics, which lasted even longer once I became addicted to the Paralympics too. But eventually I completed the list somewhat were I started six months ago with the BBC All’s Well That Ends Well with Emma Fielding, Siân Phillips and Miriam Margolyes produced to celebrate the millennium and Michael Grandage’s Othello for the Donmar Warehouse recorded for the BBC in studio by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ewan MacGreggor, Hiddleston (again) and Kelly Reilly (which again I wish had been filmed), ending finally with Argo’s dull Hamlet, which I reviewed here. And if all that’s been exhausting to read you should have listened to some of them.
If the project demonstrated anything to me, it’s that most of the cliché’s are true. There really isn’t anyone like Shakespeare for the depth and quality of language, for investigating the human spirit, for capturing our national identity. But like I said that it’s then up to the director and actors to communicate that language, story and history to the audience, to believe in what they’re doing. Surprisingly it’s the so-called obscurities which came out best, especially later when listening to the audios, where when someone more used to Lear is handed Pericles they find another character of dimension.
But it's also suggested that every generation deserves its complete works because what all of these endeavours capture, from Vivat Rex to ArkAngel, isn't just an interpretation of the text, but a snapshot of the theatrical life of the nation through directors and through casting. Television hasn't had a complete works since the 80s, audio since 1998, and although in both cases the BBC is slowly recording version of some of the plays, it's those obscurities that could do with some attention. Now that Edward III and others have joined the canon, isn't it time for them to be given some professional attention?
[This post was originally written as part of the Review 2012 series on my personal blog, the rest of which can be seen here.]
Review 2012: The Projects:
My Year Watching Shakespeare.
Theatre Shakespeare. Twenty-twelve was an excellent year for Shakespeare. Arguably, of course, every year venerates Bill to some degree but with the Cultural Olympiad deciding that he’s one our greatest exports, twenty-twelve was indeed an excellent year for Shakespeare. Not since the birthday celebrations in 1997, has there been such a focus across the media and in theatres, with the Shakespeare: Staging The World exhibition at the British Museum, the Globe to Globe season at the “replica” with all of the plays in various languages from visiting theatre groups, part of a World Shakespeare Festival.
But for those of us in the provinces, it was still a great year for accessible Shakespeare with his plays appearing across the BBC in various forms which was why at around March time I decided that I’d spend a portion of the year working my own way through the canon, with non-broadcast plays covered by other productions on film, video and audio I’d not had a chance to catch up with yet. So I printed off an alphabetical list and stuck it to my door, ready to be crossed off as I demolished each testament to man’s creative ingenuity. Plus as it turned out Geoffrey Wright’s disastrous gangster version of Macbeth with Sam Worthington in the title role.
Away from the many documentaries, the BBC’s first broadcast productions were on Radio 3. A stripped down production of Much Ado About Nothing appeared in the Afternoon on 3 slot designed to highlight the music Eric Korngold composed for a 1910s production with Daniela Nardini as Beatrice and Liam Brennan as Benedick and although it didn’t hold together as drama due to the brevity of the text it was a treat to hear Korngold’s music in situ and there was real chemistry between the stars despite them obviously reading the play in from a script. It's just a pity that it wasn't filmed as per an earlier A Midsummer Night's Dream which is still available to watch here.
On three Saturdays, the Drama on 3 slot brought Twelfth Night, Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest as well as a repeat of last year’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If the four shared anything other than cast members, it was atmosphere, especially Dream which was recorded on location in a Sussex woodland which meant the timber of the voices and footprints created an extra level of twilight magic (a production aided by Roger Allum’s excellent Bottom). David Tennant and Ron Cook bestrode the Night and Romeo in various roles with only The Tempest not quite holding together due to a confusing restructuring of the text. Epic Prosporo from David Warner though.
June brought BBC Four’s broadcast of the RSC’s then current production of Julius Caesar. Produced by Illuminations (whose previous work includes recordings of David Tennant in Hamlet and Patrick Stewart in Macbeth), their grand experiment was to record the play’s public scenes in the RSC theatre during a performance and intercut that with intimate moments shot on location in an abandoned shopping mall, an experiment didn’t quite work for me. The theatre scenes had a glorious energy, which wasn't quite replicated in the interior scenes at first, despite a magnetic Brutus performance from Paterson Joseph.
But it’s worth noting that Caesar isn’t my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays anyway. After a tremendous first few opening acts, it descends into a tedious miasma of skirmishes and spats but, and this is important, this production somehow managed to make those lucid and emotionally charged especially as the loyalties of the conspirators were wrought asunder. But I just couldn’t help, during the scenes artistically shot using iPhones wondering who was holding the camera and how they were able to get all of those angles. Nevertheless this was a bold statement on how television and theatre companies need not be deadly rivals.
Illuminations had begun planning on a recording of the RSC’s repertory of The Histories, but this was cancelled when the behemoth that was The Hollow Crown spun across the horizon. A filmic version of the first Henriad, this didn’t disappoint in entertainment terms with starry casts, incandescent photography and interconnected readings of the plays even if ambitious Saturday night scheduling during Wimbledon meant the audiences weren’t quite as huge as they deserved to be, watching Twitter on those evening revealed that casting Tom Hiddleston drew in a demographic that might otherwise be uninterested.
Of the four, Richard II was the most successful thanks to Ben Wishaw's mesmerising whisper though the title role and a determination to put the text to the forefront, especially during the John of Gaunt sections, where a slow push in did full justice to Patrick Stewart's enunciation of The Sceptred Isle. If anything, the Henry V was less successful due to its determination not to be anything like the Branagh film, rather than be its own thing and damn the similarities. But I was please to have seen been able to cross the rarely filmed Henry IVs of my list. Little did I know what was to come.
Hiddleston was actually the second Henry I’d seen of the year, the first being Jamie Parker’s boyishly regal version in the Globe’s touring production of Henry V which I wrote about at length here. Then, come August, I was hearing the play again along with a dozen others as part of the BBC Radio 4 Extras repeat of Vivat Rex, the twenty-six part mash-up of plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare and their contemporaries describing the history of the monarchy from Edward II through to Elizabeth I produced in 1977 to commemorate the Queen’s silver jubilee, now re-emerging in her Diamond year.
The series was gamely broadcast on weekday mornings for a month and I giddly recorded them all and listened to them across about four days, lost in the maze of words and history. In project terms it meant I somewhat heard my first production of Edward III, listed as anonymous then but subsequent “canonised” as at least a collaboration thanks to textual analysis. It also allowed me to include other playwrights in my personal festival, including expectedly John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck and the anonymous Thomas of Woodstock albeit in heavily truncated versions.
Which, as far as I can remember, was it for broadcast Shakespeare. But there was still another twenty-odd plays to cover, having disregarded The Two Noble Kinsmen due to only recently listening to the one available professional recording within months of starting to work through the canon in earnest and assuming that Vivat Rex had more than covered the shortfall. Luckily because I’m a fan with an overbearing collector gene, I’ve multiple copies of all the plays in various formats from different companies, so it was really just a matter of choosing what to listen to, thinned down somewhat by having to select productions I’d not visited yet.
So on my flat screen I saw Ralph Fiennes’s visceral Coriolanus, Trevor Nunn’s RSC production of King Lear with Ian McKellen facing off against Sylvester McCoy’s clown, Nunn’s The Comedy of Errors with Judi Dench curiously recorded in a studio with audience cutaways and pretence of having been shot in the RSC theatre, a bizarre 1983 Antony and Cleopatra with Timothy Dalton and Lynn Redgrave with Nichelle Nichols and Walter Keonig in minor roles, Tom Stoppard’s truncation of The Merchant of Venice presented by the National Youth Theatre in 1998 and a charming Taming of the Shrew from Canada’s CBC in the 1980s.
Audio is trickier. There are essentially four collections available; The 50s Marlowe Society in conjunction with the British Council released on Argo, the 60s Shakespeare Recording Society productions published by Harper Collins, the 90s Arkangel complete works directed by Clive Brill and the BBC radio versions produced in and around the millennium along with a smattering of classic radio releases. All share some extraordinary casting choices often dictated by contemporary productions but unfortunately they’re also incredibly inconsistent, demonstrating that even the best plays can be rendered unlistenable through bad choices.
In other words, while you might assume the Argo version of As You Like It and might be boring and bobbins and the Arkangel Troilus and Cressida a treat, the reverse is true, but its reversed again when comparing Argo’s unfunny Merry Wives of Windsor and Arkangel’s superb The Winter’s Tale. John Gielgud crops up as Time in the latter and can also be heard narrating their poignant Pericles, and it’s casting choices such as these which led me, despite their bland Cymbeline to defaulting to ArkAngel anyway. Their treatment of King John gives it the panto welly it needs, the Timon of Athens a clear, logical communication substituting the new National Theatre production I couldn’t get to.
Arkangel is also the place to go to hear a young Damien Lewis offer his Valentine in the neglected The Two Gentlemen of Verona (opposite Michael Maloney’s Proteus) and Harriet Walter’s expressive Tamora in Titus Andronicus. But eventually I had to resort the Argo with their rather neutral interpretation of Love’s Labour’s Lost and the HarperCollins Measure for Measure in which Sir Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton manage to drain their dialogue of all its subliminal bawdiness against which Gielgud’s Duke seems perfectly cast even if he doesn’t quite manage to emphasise the shiftiness inherent in the role.
There was a gap in the middle for the Olympics, which lasted even longer once I became addicted to the Paralympics too. But eventually I completed the list somewhat were I started six months ago with the BBC All’s Well That Ends Well with Emma Fielding, Siân Phillips and Miriam Margolyes produced to celebrate the millennium and Michael Grandage’s Othello for the Donmar Warehouse recorded for the BBC in studio by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ewan MacGreggor, Hiddleston (again) and Kelly Reilly (which again I wish had been filmed), ending finally with Argo’s dull Hamlet, which I reviewed here. And if all that’s been exhausting to read you should have listened to some of them.
If the project demonstrated anything to me, it’s that most of the cliché’s are true. There really isn’t anyone like Shakespeare for the depth and quality of language, for investigating the human spirit, for capturing our national identity. But like I said that it’s then up to the director and actors to communicate that language, story and history to the audience, to believe in what they’re doing. Surprisingly it’s the so-called obscurities which came out best, especially later when listening to the audios, where when someone more used to Lear is handed Pericles they find another character of dimension.
But it's also suggested that every generation deserves its complete works because what all of these endeavours capture, from Vivat Rex to ArkAngel, isn't just an interpretation of the text, but a snapshot of the theatrical life of the nation through directors and through casting. Television hasn't had a complete works since the 80s, audio since 1998, and although in both cases the BBC is slowly recording version of some of the plays, it's those obscurities that could do with some attention. Now that Edward III and others have joined the canon, isn't it time for them to be given some professional attention?
Cyber.
Engineering MIT's Technology Review reports that new generation ocular implants with allow people with degenerative eye disorders to see. One particular word in the following paragraph is a bit worrying:
"The Argus II, the first “bionic eye” to reach commercial markets, contains an array of 60 electrodes, akin to 60 pixels, that are implanted behind the retina to stimulate the remaining healthy cells. The implant is connected to a camera, worn on the side of the head, that relays a video feed."Rather like megapixels in a camera, the greater the number of electrodes, the clearer the image. Before long it seems possible that having these bionic eyes will become as natural as a false limb.
Vastra Investigates.
TV Another tease. Spin-off. Please. Vasta Investigates is really an extended sketch rather explaining how humans when faced with the most extraordinary events and unalike people will largely processes it just as Douglas Adams predicted when writing about the Somebody Else's Problem condition in his novel Life, The Universe and Everything. When confronted with something which doesn't quite match the expected context, a person will simply block it out just as the police officer here, even after being told the truth of Vastra and Strax's existence, merely puts it to one side in the end because it's easier.
Red Brick Universities.
Academia The Victoria Building at the University of Liverpool which now houses their art gallery and museum celebrated its 120th year a couple of days ago and their blog has a commemorative history with some ravishing photographs and this factoid which is surprisingly little known (or at least few people seem to have known it when I've asked them):
"The distinctive exterior of the building led to the coining of the phrase ‘red brick university’ by Bruce Truscot, the pseudonym adopted by Edgar Allison Peers, a Professor of Spanish at Liverpool from 1922 – 52, who wrote an influential book of the same title about universities originating in the 19th century."The inevitable wikipedia entry demonstrates however that plenty of universities have red bricked buildings and live up to the name.
Antarctica.
Biology Within this past few days, after sixteen years of planning, scientists have begun drilling two miles into the ices of Antarctica searching for life:
"The most likely organisms to be found will be bacterial - - they’re everywhere,” David Pearce, a microbiologist at the program said in an interview in October, shortly before heading to the southern continent to begin preparations. “If there’s nothing there, that will tell us the limits for the existence of life on Earth.”
American English.
Books Tim Parks in The New York Review of Books on the process differences between writing for British and American audiences. We don't speak the same language:
"I had already sorted out the spelling, in fact had written the book with an American spell check, and didn’t expect that there would be much else to do. Wrong. Almost at once there was a note saying that throughout the 300 pages my use of “carriage” for a passenger train car must be changed to “coach.” Since this is a book about trains and train travel there were ninety-eight such usages. There was also the problem that I had used the word “coach” to refer to a long distance bus. Apparently the twenty-four-hour clock was not acceptable, so the 17:25 Regionale from Milan to Verona had to become the 5:25 PM Regionale. Where I, in a discussion of prices, had written “a further 50 cents” the American edit required “a further 50 euro cents,” as if otherwise an American reader might imagine Italians were dealing in nickels and dimes."Presumably because of years spent online and watching Hollywood movies, the differences between the different prose styles isn't as noticable to me. Perhaps it's because I'm automatically translating. Or perhaps it's that I expect a piece written by someone from a particular place to sound a particular was and my brain unconsciously adjusts accordingly. Luckily for Parks there is room to negotiate / for negotiation.
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