Or whatever the hell you will

[yendi]

We tried watching Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, which I'd rented from the library. Twelve minutes in, it has to be the worst Shakespeare adaptation I've seen this side of Joe Papp's Julius Caesar (Pacino as Antony! Martin Sheen as Brutus!) or Max Schnell's Hamlet. We get an awful amount of time spent on the shipwreck (with additional narrative to tell you what's going on, because, you know, Shakepeare's writing wasn't good enough to convey what he meant by itself), some awful overacting, and some mangling of what little of the Bard's dialogue we hear (including from Imogen Stubbs), and no sense that it would get better.

It gets a 7.1 at the IMDB, so I don't doubt it gets better* (I would assume that Ben Kingsley and Helena Bonham Carter would be a factor). But after seeing two superb renditions of the play this year, none of us had the patience to see if it would.

Frankly, Shakespeare's too good to justify twelve minutes of suck.

We switched to a Cirque du Soleil DVD I got from the library instead. No regrets so far.

*Especially since the only way it could get worse would involve the surprise casting of Sheen, Pacino, and Schnell.

Comments

[curt-holman.livejournal.com]

Ben Kingsley plays the Fool (literally), and is very strange -- he's weirdly sinister. I didn't "get it."

My favorite performance, as I recall, was Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio.

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

One of the standard interpretations of Feste is as a Melancholy. Kingsley was playing the Fool both Melancholy and Wise.

I blame Trevor Nunn for this; Kingsley is far too good an actor to screw up at that magnitude.

Then again, I have yet to see Feste played as a Melancholy and like it. He was written as a wise-ass: "There is no treason in an allowed Fool..."

[omnia-mutantur.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost? I think, so far, that's my least watchable Shakespeare nomination. In fairness, I haven't actually made it much further than a half hour in yet, though.

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

Oh holy crap, that's awful. The best reason to watch it is either as a drinking game or an MST3K.

I'm sorry, but watching Branagh burst into song was just way too much for me. And Alicia Silverstone? Doing Shakespeare? Yeah, that went about the way you'd expect.

It is worth watching just for the bad movie entertainment value, though :D

[yendi]

I've managed to miss this one. I intend to keep missing it for as long as I can (frankly, LLL is a problematic play to begin with, even before asking Batgirl to sing).

[gallowglass.livejournal.com]

It's ironic really, because Branagh directed what I consider to be the definitive version of Twelfth Night for his Renaissance Theatre Company back in the '80s. I was lucky enough to see it live on stage and it was filmed for TV broadcast and later got a DVD release over here. I don't suppose it has a region 1 release but if you ever get the chance to see it it's well worth while. Richard Briers is a great Malvolio and an utter revelation for those of us who only knew him from TV light entertainment.

[losgunna.livejournal.com]

You can never go wrong with Cirque. I've really loved everything I've seen.

This includes Zumanity in Vegas. If you ever get to Vegas, I highly recommend it - I think you would greatly enjoy it!

[yendi]

Honestly, if it hadn't been for the price ($160 before fees for the cheapest and crappiest seats), we'd have considered the upcoming Boston show. Alas, I suspect we'll have to content ourselves with the DVDs.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I did make it all the way through, but I'm not at all sure how it managed to be that unfunny and uninteresting with such a well-chosen cast (particularly Hawthorne as Malvolio).

If you want to see a really great version of Twelfth Night, I recommend the BBC's, directed by John Gorrie, with Felicity Kendal as Viola.

[yendi]

I'll hunt that one down. It's such a wonderful play (and like I said, we'd already seen two superb stage versions this year), that I'm amazed that someone could make a version as awful as Nunn seems to have made.

[brendastarr.livejournal.com]

I would suggest watching the PBS version with Helen Hunt playing Viola. I really enjoyed it in my early teens. Of course, its been years since I watched it.

[yendi]

Thanks -- I'll search for that one.

[melvh.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, I've never actually seen that one from the beginning. But having picked it up from the middle a number of times, it doesn't suck. And I really like Kingsley's Feste --though he was played a bit crueler than I've remembered from past performances.

[yendi]

I suspect that not seeing the beginning is key.