stevemyrgy's reviews

Having seen eight different movies and three filmed stage versions of this play, I have to say that none of them got close to the visceral experience of Harriet Walter enunciating the timeless phrase 'we are such things as dreams are made on'. Her timing, excruciatingly expressive facial gestures, and pregnant pause between this line, its follower ('and our little lives are rounded with a sleep') and the lines which follow returning her from her contemplation of the eternal to to interpersonal here-and-now, truly allowed me to sense how Shakespeare was here summing up his career with a summation as inspirational as it is deflating.

That this expression of pure artistic eloquence followed an exquisite effect of images projected with and through a series of balloons that then, as the full house lights harshly come back on, Prospero violently pop, is a testament to Phyllida Lloyd's mastery of staging.

Without a doubt, the most moving and passionate Tempest I've seen. Combining as it does magic, true love, political conspiracy, family revenge and slapstick humor, this is far from an easy play to pull off as an integral dramatic whole. The masterful direction of Lloyd, the passion brought to her acting by Walter and the talents of all the other players managed, at least for me, to do just this.

As a watcher of far too many serials (I'm beginning to regret my passion for them), this one is better than average, but still falls prey to the normal pitfalls of plotting of most of them: a token female who really serves little if any purpose to the plot; a truly nefarious bad guy who has a seemingly endless supply of henchman who get disposed of along the way; a brutal, unjustified murder that must be avenged; a bumbling, well-meaning sidekick along for largely comic relief; a variety of cliff-hanger endings (you can only use falling off a cliff once - and this was a fifteen parter!); incredibly bad aim when shooting (I've a game of counting how many shots are fired by both sides in a gun battle versus how many shots actually find their targets); enormous plot holes (the heroine leaves AFTER the bad guys, but still gets to the shack to warn the good guys BEFORE their enemies arrive!); countless improbable recoveries (from being knocked cold, they can get up and carry on fighting within a matter of seconds); and finally, and most importantly, the dimwittedness of the bad guys, whom have already shown themselves to be stone cold killers, to NOT kill the good guy when he comes under their power ('okay, go and tie him up', when they could simply have shot him).

This serial makes ALL of these blunders, but still, it is better than average. They did have only one set of bad guys, thus not needlessly complicating the viewer's efforts to figure out who is working against whom. They didn't use any stupid masks (ala The Crimson Ghost and even The Phantom). They did portray a relatively sympathetic attitude to Amerindians - indeed, the title character is supposedly of the Navajo tribe, and a general respect for following law and order supercedes several angry attempts to 'lynch him!'.

The genealogical revelation at the end seemed somewhat unnecessary, except for the existence of a subconscious racism working below the surface, but this is mere speculation. At least it didn't end with the hero kissing the heroine!

Not as bad a time waster as others I've seen, and I've really grown to like Kenneth MacDonald as a deep-voiced, conniving villain.

Once again, due to the lack of any other reviews of an RSC film, I am forced to write one. (I always prefer reading them to writing my own, but will do so should there be none). This was a very, very good production. They stayed quite true to the play, although it seemed that the uniforms would place some of the combatants at a later time that the start of the first millinium, when Shakespeare set it. However, the costumes of the British, particularly the Welsh mountaineers, were seemingly appropriate to the time.

The main female lead, Imogen, is played by Bethane Cullinane who brings and energy and passion to the many ups and downs experienced by this young lady who finds herself head over heels in love in a fractious court during perilous times. Her husband, Posthumus, was played by Keran Abeysekara and although I would have preferred a larger physical frame (his rival for Imogen's affections towers over him by a good six inches and at least fifty pounds), his fervent deliveries more than compensate make this potential drawback somewhat trivial.

The sexes of several characters - the King, the Queen, the doctor, the most important attendant and one of the kidnapped heirs to the throne - have been reversed, necessitated some pronoun, name spelling and official title alterations, but this provides no impediment to the overall fine presentation. What was somewhat strange was having siblings of different racial coloration.

Of particular note was the very effective manner with which 'asides' were handled: all other characters of the stage would freeze, some high pitched electronic music would play, betokening a somewhat mystic environment, and the aside would be delivered, with the audience thus never having to worry about how the other characters on the stage at the time are not privy to the utterance. Also, the manner in which the Queen is saved during the climactic was also staged in quite a 'Wow!' manner.

Having watched the 1982 and 2014 movie adaptations of this play, I was looking forward to the scene in which Shakespeare requires Jupiter to descend from the heavens to deliver some oracular pronouncement to a Posthumus who feels he is near death. This is to occur after he's been approached by the shades (ghosts) of his dead parents and brothers. The little cut out pieces of paper did NOT do the job of the ghosts, which were much more convincingly presented in Moshinsky in 1982 movie and (although three of the four were missing) in Almereyda in 2014. However, the arrival of Jupiter was splendidly done here - with the shocking drawback that it wasn't Jupiter at all! O well, directorial license is always a good thing, though it does lead to inevitable disagreements and disappointments.

Overall, very, very well done and well worth the little over three hours of viewing time it requires.

According to an interview with Gregory Doran, its artistic director, the Royal Shakespeare Society wanted to make this production a fittng one for Shakespeare's 400th anniversary, particularly in terms of its use of modern technology, supposedly something which the Bard himself achieved - with different means of course - when the play was first performed in the 1610s.

This was most pointedly achieved in the use of motion capture technology for the presentation of a luminous Ariel, who floated above the stage, mirroring the efforts of the actions of the actor Mark Quartley on the stage. This wasn't bad, but why didn't they try to achieve something even more wizard-like with the critical scene with Stephano, Trinculo and Calaban, when Ariel manages to get Trinculo in a lot of trouble by mimicking his voice while his spirit is unseen by all three? Much better were the simulated backgrounds during the finale of Prsopero's magical presentation to the young lovers.

Simon Russell Beale does a truly impressive job of mirroring Prsopero's primal doubts: about giving up his magic, about losing his daughter, and about seeking revenge on those who have come under his power after his twelve years of exile on his magical isle. Simon Trinder and Tony Jawawardena do a marvelous job as Trinculo and Stephano: but buffoons are relatively easy to play, and the parts are admirably written to give rise to laughter. Jenny Rainsford and Daniel Easton were okay as the young lovers, but paled in comparison with their counterparts in the 2014 Globe Theatre production which, unfortunately for this version, I watched just before viewing this one.

Elly Condron, Jennifer Witton and Samantha Hay as the conjured goddesses literally 'stopped the show' in my mind with their beautiful singing.

This is a hard play to pull off as an integral whole, combining as I believe it does stories of familial revenge, young love and a large measure of comic relief, generally delivered in a slapstick manner. I truly admire the dedication and professionalism of this attempt, but Shakespeare set them a daunting task to combine these quite seemingly disparate parts into an integrated whole. That their achievement seemed to be missing something does not diminish my respect for their efforts.

I was so impressed by Lindsay Duncan in the 1997 History of Tom Jones, in which she played a completely different type of role, that I searched for more of her work. This search led me to this exemplary drama, one that truly gets to the heart of a critical 'women's issue' : that of service wives, and the expectations they are quite unjustifiably subjected to with no real regard to their own wishes or desires. Duncan is absolutely superb in portraying a woman who is only slowly, and at times painfully, coming to grips with how far she has been distanced from her true self. The rest of the cast, particularly Prunella Scales, who I'd only known from Fawlty Towers, are superb. Her children, her husband, her would-be lover and her actual lover all deliver understated but poignant depictions of a life in which no one ever seems to get exactly what one wants: an astonishingly realistic representation of modern life.