Coriolanus (National Theatre Live, 2014)

“I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying water in it. One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning."

I'm a Shakespeare geek, I suppose, but of his thirty-nine plays I have certainly neither read nor seen them all. So, having neither seen nor read Coriolanus, I'm caught between a first experience of the play- one extraordinary both in itself and in what it has to say in our sadly populist times, where militaristic demagoguery continues to plague us.

I can see why the play is not so popular and well-known as the Warwickshire lad's other late tragedies. It is austere, has a proud and abrasive protagonist who is not inclined to self-aware soliloquys, and assumes a knowledge of semi-mythical early republican Rome, in the 490s BC, where the last king has barely been deposed and where, with the first secession of the plebs, issus of class and war intertwine as the young city state conquers its neighbours.

One must surely imagine this play, with its emphasis on the people, the tribunes, the conflict between arrogant privilege and the popular will, would be much less resonant in early Jacobean times than it is today, where Coriolanus as a proud warrior and would-be tyrant evokes not so much the sadly delusional Trump as the much younger, leaner and more sanely arrogant Cummings. Tom Hiddleston is superb, succeeding in seeming authoritative and believable as a proud and reactionary soldier undone by hubris, his performance full of nice little touches, at limes leavening the tragic gloom with bitter humour. Mark Gatis is similrly superb as Menenius, the humour of his performance concealing dark depths. The sparse production, too, is a triumph, allowing the play itself to succeed by its words and performances. It's just a shame Birgitte Hjort Sorensen of Borgen has such a relatively small part.

Magnificent, both as a play and a performance. Not all tragedies have to be Hamlet, and there's a real power in letting the interior thoughts of the protagonist remain opaque. From Hiddleston I've never seen a finer performance.

As You Like It (1936)

"He that sweetest rose will find / Must find love's prick, and Rosalind."

Well then. This saucy, decidedly queer play, new to me, is not what I expected from Shakespeare, and the fact that this is a post-code film from 1936, subtitles for YouTube provided for cultural reasons by the US Government (I bet Trump has put a stop to that) only serves to show how intrinsic to the play this queerness is.

I know Shakespeare, I flatter myself to say, better than most. I have a mere undergraduate degree, from Nottingham uni, but before tonight I knew 22 Shakespeare plays to varying extents, now 23. And until tonight I have given no more than perfunctory acknowledgement to queer theory in relation to the bard. I am, of course, aware of the trope of women dressing as men in such plays as Twelfth Night, but have accepted this as early modern LGBT (let us not forget the T) only in the generic way that one must accord to all cross-dressing. And yet... here Rosalind calls her male disguise "Ganymede", Jove's eponymous catamite. It's hard not to see deliberate, glorious, authorial queerness here. And that's before considering the wonderful sexual ambiguity of pretty much all of Rosalind's lines once she takes on male guise. It's doubly wonderful that this happily queer character should be played here, with a noticeable accent but a great deal of charm, by Elisabeth Bergner, a Viennese Jew who had fled Hitler's Berlin.

Ok, queerness aside this stuck me as a relatively ho-hum Shakespeare comedy with moments of lyrical genius, not quite up there with his best, but that's a relative statement. But there's much to marvel at with this somewhat ancient artifact. My reason for watching this was the presence of Henry Ainley, father of the actor Anthony Ainley, well-known to us Doctor Who fans and subject of a splendid biography. Ainley, though, turned out to be the exemplar of something truly fascinating; the theatrical delivery of Shakespeare of a certain era, still "traditional" although pretty much beyond living memory, against which the more "naturalistic" delivery of actors such as Lauence Olivier.

Also notable are the presence of John Laurie (Private Fraser in Dad's Army) as a young heartthrob and a young Peter Bull- the Soviet ambassador in many James Bond films- as a young yokel. This film is fascinating, in the public domain, and on YouTube with proper subtitles.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (David Kerr, 2016)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

It's tempting to belittle the work of adapting Shakespeare- after all, the words are already written and can hardly be much improved upon- but this adaptation by Russell T. Davies, fitting into a tidy ninety minutes, reminds us that there's a real artistry to it. The words, although abridged, may be Shakespeare's, but this production is fresh and original. Top marks for the casting, too, letting the likes of Bernard Cribbins and Richard Wilson play minor roles and leaving the principals (Theseus, Titania and Bottom aside) to promising newcomers.

John Hannah's Theseus is dictator of a totalitarian state, festooned with fascistic imagery, and Hippolyta is his prisoner, the spoils of war, kept rather kinkily in a constant state of bondage. All this fits in rather well with Egeus' tyranny towards his daughter Helena, of course, and makes a nice constraint with the humanity of the "mechanicals", rehearsing in their pub with Matt Lucas being rather good as Bottom. I love everyone's hostility to Theseus on the pub telly.

The final act looks rather different with this slant on the play, with Theseus literally dying of laughter from the mechanicals' play and the end of tyranny. As a final touch we see that Hippolyta is in fact a fairy, and that Oberon and Titania have been plotting her rescue all this time. An inspired take on the play which looks magnificent throughout.

Richard III (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"So wise so young, they say, do never live long..."

And so the BBC's Hollow Crown series comes to an end with Benedict Cumberbatch excelling as our antihero in Richard III. Much emphasis is placed on the direct continuation of the Henry VI plays; we begin with a "Previously" montage and the cast is the same, adding a certain richness; Sophie Okonedo in particular has been magnificent as Margaret from Henry VI's young bride to the embittered young woman we see here. But the stand-out performance is obviously Cumberbatch, from the very beginning.

This, unlike the previous two instalments, is based on a play I know well, so I will not be treading over the same ground here as I did in uni essays many years ago. Suffice to say that this play, though still an early one, is deliciously addictive tale of the pursuit of power, and its central billion is one of the greatest in all drama. But it feels very different seen in sequence, with Richard and many other characters familiar from earlier plays.

Visually, this is a claustrophobic production of the play, with Richard often seen in a dark room with a chessboard (symbolism much?), and even the climactic battle scenes shot closely and claustrophobically, giving us a vivid impression of the fear, violence and chaos. There's a lot of visual storytelling here, helping with the abridging of the play.

This, and the whole second series of The Hollow Crown, has been a triumph. Now, if only they'd filmed Cumberbatch's Hamlet...

 

Henry VI, Part 2 (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"O tiget's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!"

The cast also includes Stanley Townsend, Sam Troughton and Jason Watkins and is a superb assemblage of actors not all of whom, alas, can be tagged. This is a superb array of performances.

Anyway, the BBC continue their Season of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays plus Richard III under the Hollow Crown imprimatur, and it's awesome. Here, despite the title, we have the very end of Part 2 and all of Part 3, much abridged. I've seen and read a lot of Shakespeare but these television plays are my first experience of the Henry VI plays.

These plays are early; Shakespeare was much younger when writing them than he was for his more acclaimed plays, so the theme of kingship is not dealt with in the subtlety of the plays he would later write for the decades prior to Henry VI's accession. The dialogue and characterisation are sublime, though; Queen Margaret is delicious, and it's so fascinating to see the young Richard of Gloucester, slowly forming into the Machiavel he will eventually become. Benedict Cumberbatch stands out, obviously, but Sophie Okonedo gives the most memorable performance as z superb Margaret, and Stankey Townsend's Warwick deserves mention too, as does Adrian Dunbar's Richard of York.

It's a gloriously bloody play, with Richard of York's sadistic dispatching at Margaret's hands as its centrepiece. Henry, again, is shown to be a peaceful, harmless wet blanket- something which, for a King, paradoxically engenders civil war, death and untold misery, as Henry sees at his defeat by Edward IV, with father killing son and vice versa. No wonder he goes mad. And in allowing his armies to be commanded by a woman ("The Queen has more success when you are absent"), he fails at what a King was expected to do.

It's a superb production of a gripping play, one I'm glad I've seen. And the end- with Richard plotting his own way to the throne- makes me excited for the next instalment, one much more familiar...

Henry VI, Part 1 (Dominic Cooke, 2016)

"A day will come when York shall claim his own..."

It's been four years, but the BBC have finally got around to doing Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses plays under their The Hollow Crown imprint. Strictly speaking this isn't Henry VI, Part 1: we end the much-truncated production about halfway through Part 2. But it's a welcome attempt at some rarely-filmed plays and the cast, including those listed below, includes Philip Glenister, David Troughton and Michael Gambon.

Like its Hollow Crown predecessors, this is a straightforward retelling with 15th century costume and no directorial flourishes. That means it's all reliant on the acting, and the acting is superb. This is a play from a very young Shakespeare- one of his early hits- and isn't well known, also being somewhat lacking in famous lines, much as Shakespeare's dialogue is never less than sublime, even in his youth. There aren't, as far as I'm aware, any film versions to compare this to, so in spite of being good rather than great it's sort of the best by default.

We begin with huge vistas of Dover's white cliffs; this tries to be as visual as possible, in the Hollow Crown house style. But it's all about the performances. I haven't seen this play before, truncated or not, but I much enjoyed it, raising perhaps an eyebrow at just how wet the King is, how women are just chattels in this world, the very derogatory portrayal of Joan of Arc, but most of all, as ever with Shakespeare, getting drunk in the language.

The production is merely good; the play (or play and a half) is sublime.

Henry V (1989)

"I'm afeared there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?"

This is the second screen adaptation of this play that I've seen and blogged after The Hollow Crown, albeit one made twenty-three years earlier, and the differences are stark from the opening scene, where Derek Jacobi's chorus awakens us by lighting a match. This introduces two themes: this production's constant okay with light and it's claustrophobic feeling, indoors and on small sets as much as possible and with the location scenes shot so as not to look expansive. Hal finds the crown as uneasy as did his father is the clear message, and his guilt over being an usurper's son, paralleled by his anxiety over the war being just (because sending people to their deaths and their bereaved dependants into penury because of who should be King is totally just, right?) is reflected in the visuals.

Kenneth Branagh is a suitably angsty Henry. Yes, the speeches are present and correct, but this is not a jingoistic Henry V but an anxious one.

The rest of the cast excellent too, including a surprisingly unshouty Brian Blessed, whose message to Charles VI reeks of a menace he hasn't exuded since he was Augustus in I, Clavdivs. And, on top of those mentioned in the tags, we didn't have room for Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane as a splendid Falstaff in scenes nicked from the Henry IV's, Robert Stephens, Paul Scofield, Harold Innocent and a very young Christian Bale. I particularly enjoyed Ian Holm's Fluellen, discoursing on Pompey the Great- for Shakespeare, all Welshmen are in some way his old classics teacher!

This is a superbly visual production, superlatively acted and directed. The emphasis on sparse lighting, points of light in the darkness and claustrophobia gives us an individual version of the play from Kenneth Branagh that is highly effective. A fine film.

Much Ado About Nothing (2013)

"When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married."

This may be one of the most low budget films I will ever review for this blog, yet it is quietly wonderful; filmed entirely in the grounds of Joss Whedon's house in classy monochrome, a cast of Whedon's usual suspects combine with the enforced creativity of filming caused by the restricted locations to create some real magic.

Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof have always been actors worthy of the greatest roles, and they both shine as Beatrice and Benedick. Clark Gregg, a natural at benevolent authority figures, is an excellent Leonato, while Sean Maher is suitably sinister as Don John. Fran Kranz (against type) and newcomer Jillian Morgese are also highlights as Claudio and Hero. The cast is rounded out by Reed Diamond as Don Pedro and, intriguingly, Nathan Fillion in a comic role as the delightfully soft man of malapropism a Dogberry.

The different rooms of the house are nicely used to separate the characters during the masked ball, but the best framed scenes are those whereby first Benedick and then Beatrice are made to "overhear" talk that the other loves them. Denisof's comic acting is superb here, but both he and Acker are also naturals at delivering the ensuing soliloquys.

This is one of Shakespeare's most enjoyable comedies, with much wise philosophising on the ways of love and relationships, although even those, such as myself, who are burdened with a "y" chromosome find it hard, looking across the centuries, not to notice the appalling gender double standards at play here. Leonato, in particular, is not a sympathetic character to modern eyes in his denunciation of Hero at her aborted wedding, but Clark Gregg deals with this as well as can be done.

I urge you to see this wonderful film. What can be better than both Joss Whedon and William Shakespeare?

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

“If love be rough with you, be rough with love.”

I’ve always been in two minds about Romeo and Juliet. On some days I find it a genuinely affecting romantic drama. Trouble is, though, behind Shakespeare’s wonderfully eloquent language lies a plot which tempts you to take the piss; it’s such an uber-melodrama it half takes the piss out of itself. And this is a young Shakespeare, closer to the blood and gore of Titus Andronicus than to his most acclaimed tragedies; the play is certainly less reflective and philosophical than his other more well-known plays, and much more about the set pieces.

All of which, of course, makes this play gloriously cinematic, and an opportunity which Baz Luhrmann has grabbed with both hands. This film is brilliantly set area city of “Verona Beach”, an ultra-modern, sun-soaked urban sprawl plagued by gang warfare between the Montagues and the Capulets. The potential anachronisms are wittily handled: there is a police officer called “Captain Prince”, and both “sword” and “longsword” are brands of gun, which is a stroke of genius. The narration, of course, falls to a newsreader. As for the cast, Homeland’s very own Claire Danes is superb, Leonardo di Capio is decent enough, and Miriam Margolyes is Miriam Margolyes. Basically, it rules. There are even nice little in-jokes on the billboards for us Shakespeare geeks.

It’s great to see the imagination on display for the set pieces- the initial Montague ? Capulet scrap happens, with guns, in a petrol station, and it all feels uncannily like the climax to an episode of The A-Team. We have the gayest Mercutio ever, allusions to ecstasy (how very ‘90s), a hugely gay party at the Capulets’ crib, and lots of colour and spectacle.

Even so, this is Romeo and Juliet, a play written about two young lovers, disturbingly early on in their teens, who die tragically because Romeo is pretty damn stupid. There’s lots and lots of Catholic imagery, of course, and I’m reminded that Father Lawrence is a suspiciously positive depiction of a Catholic priest for Elizabethan England, which reminds one of the theories on Shakespeare’s supposed Catholicism. Be that as it may, it’s weird to see Pete Postlethwaite doing an American accent.

It’s a brilliant depiction of the play, right down to the closing titles happening to Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film.

Henry V (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it."

In a way, it's rather annoying that I've done so much musing over the disconnect between Shakespeare's plotting dialogue, specifically written to be performed on a stage, with all the limitations that implies, and the medium of television, and sumptuously shot location shots to boot. If I'd waited until now to talk about I would have had so much to say. After all, consider the chorus here- a gloriously metatextual character, probably played originally by Shakespeare himself, who refers to a "wooden O" and apologises for the compression of time which all historical dramas do and which his bits help to elide. It's particularly eyebrow-raising to hear John Hurt declaiming apologies for not being able to represent the battle scenes properly as we watch brilliantly realised battle scenes. It's a juxtaposition that seems almost deliberately intended to highlight the tension between media.

Metatextual stuff aside, though, and briefly mentioning that this is my first experience of the play, not just there's an intriguing political subtext. This play follows on directly from its predecessors, even to the point of featuring Bardolph, Pistol, Mistress Quickly and (sort of) Falstaff. We can assume, then, that there's a continuity of theme, and that the examination of the nature of kingship should be understood in relation to this continuity. In fact, There's an interesting scene, on the morning of the battle, when he pleads with God not to punish him for the sins of his father, insisting that "I Richard's body have interred anew". Hence, presumably, his determination to attribute his eventual victory to God alone, and perhaps even his very determination to pursue his claims in France- an assertion of royal legitimacy and, perhaps, one his usurping father could not have made.

Hal may be very different from his former self, as we clearly see when he approves the hanging of his old mate Bardolph. The prevention of looting in captured towns is more important to a king than old friendships, however oddly this may sit with his later orders to kill all the prisoners!!! But is he really all that good a king? Because, unusually for Shakespeare, I think I can detect a definite authorial voice at work in this play. And that voice is asking why on Earth should ordinary people suffer and die in war just to satisfy the "honour" of lords and kings. Shakespeare, I think, would have seen honour as Falstaff did, not as King Harry does here. Which, then, is the more virtuous? Shakespeare gives us a king who seems to fit all the conventional notions of the good king, and then questions that. After all, he kills prisoners, betrays his friends, and wages war for his personal "honour". It's a very different angle on kingship from its three prequels, but it's fascinating, important, and rounds out the thematic whole that is the four plays on kingship.

Tom Hiddleston is extraordinary, and pulls off the task of making Hal and King Henry seem simultaneously very, very different and yet absolutely the same person. His two main speeches are surprisingly low-key and un-Olivier-like.

To finish, it's interesting for this Leicestershire native to hear Pistol addressing his new wife, the former Mistress Quickly., as "me duck!" It seems that our ways of speaking once spread much further southwards than they do now. And it's a bit of a bolt to be reminded that King Henry died at 35, the age I am now. He conquered France… what have I done?

Henry IV, Part II (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Presume not that I am the thing I was!"

It's been a while since I reviewed Part I, I know. The last few weeks have been somewhat unusual, though. The blog is now back to normal and you can expect Henry V fairly sharpish, probably next Saturday. I was actually going to review a film today but I really have to get these Hollow Crown adaptations watched and reviewed as I recorded them off the telly and they're taking up too much space. So, the current schedule is Shakespeare for two consecutive Saturdays, after which Saturday (or Sunday if I happen to be out Saturday) will be where I review new episodes of Doctor Who. I'll be doing a film on Bank Holiday morning. Only one other person (yes, you, Nick!) knows what it is. After the five weeks of Doctor Who then Saturdays will revert to films again, although I also plan to slot in a recording of Macbeth from BBC 4 at some point. The rest of the week will be all Buffy and Angel.

So, Part II. Again, the only one of these plays I've read or seen before is Richard II, so forgive me if I react to a play that is new to me. There's a real sense of foreboding right from the start. All these parallels of different pairs of fathers and sons are soooo last play. The old Earl of Northumberland, such a presence in the last play, gets only two scenes, in one of which he suffers the bereavement of his much-loved son, and another in which he buggers off out of the play. It's interesting that the scene in which he hears of his bereavement should take place amongst such bleakly beautiful Northumberland countryside.

But this play, unlike its predecessor, is concerned with just one father and one son. Even Falstaff, this time, is no longer a father figure; he and Hal are on strained terms from the beginning, and Simon Russell Beale gives Falstaff a palpable anxiety throughout, as if he knows, deep down, that the prince will disown him. There's much more emphasis on his physical age, even to the point of a sex scene which makes it clear that his performance is not what it was. Tom Hiddleston, too, gives us a more serious prince from the beginning, with the frailty and mortality of his father weighing upon his mind.

This play is much more serious than its prequel. It's not that there isn't comedy- there are some glorious insults in the scene where Falstaff is arrested, and Robert Shallow is a brilliant comic creation. But there's an ever-present sense of decline and doom which can only be redeemed by the accession of a king freed from the original sin of being a usurper. The old king visibly declines throughout the play, and becomes much more morose and philosophical, even getting a soliloquy on his insomnia, which even kings are subject to. Like Cnut, this king knows that nature marks a limit to his power. Perhaps there's also a suggestion that his inability to sleep, and the tumult that besets his realm, are a result of his illegitimacy as a king. It's significant that he even quotes Richard.

We're reminded that Falstaff, as a knight, has certain feudal obligations in time of war as we see him recruiting peasants to take with him.  One of them, Ralph Mouldy, points out that his wife and children will have no breadwinner while he's away fighting, a reminder that these aristocratic wars have cruel consequences for those further down the scale. Another peasant is fatalistic about his possible death, a motif that recurs throughout the latter stages of the play: as Shallow points out, "Death is certain". For everyone in this play, death is very near. Shallow is conscious of his many dead acquaintances; he sees his generation beginning to pass away. The king is dying. People die in wars, "traitors" are casually and summarily executed, and there are many, many mentions of old Falstaff's mortality, which culminate in his admonishment from the new King Henry V.

This scene is the fulcrum of both plays, of course: the new king's "I know thee not, old man." His new, royal persona is so very different from the playboy prince of the recent past but then, of course, as we knew from Hal's soliloquy at the start of the previous play, the playboy prince was no less of a mask than the kingly one. Hal has to clearly separate the man and the king, having learned from his father that kingship is a burden.

Henry IV, Part I (Richard Eyre, 2012)

"Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!"

"I do. I will."

I'd never seen or read this play before, this English graduate sheepishly admits. There are rather a lot of them, and those pesky academics are pushing to include more and more to the fortyish plays. For the record, I've seen or red fourteen including this one. That said, it's surprising, as ever, how much of this play, a lot of it concerning Falstaff, was familiar.

That gives me a bit of a challenge. When I reviewed Julius Caesar and Richard II I was discussing the production rather than the play, which I already knew. I'll endeavour to keep this review in that same spirit, but I hope you'll forgive me a small digression on my first impressions of the play.

The play continues the theme of kingship from Richard II, with Henry IV, a usurper, plagued by guilt and incipient rebellion. Fascinatingly, there are two pairs of doubles who dominate the play. The dour, guilt-ridden, dutiful, rebellion-plagued Henry is contrasted with the fun-loving, cheerfully cynical but emotionally vulnerable Falstaff, giving Prince Hal two polar opposites as "fathers". Meanwhile, Hal, a dissolute young man who contains greatness within him, and is much cannier than he looks, is contrasted against the brave, honourable but impulsive and not-too-bright Hotspur. We get a lot of foreshadowing that Hal will put away childish things when he starts, er, kinging, and that he will, indeed, on that day, banish plump Jack and banish all the world. Hotspur, in getting himself and a lot of people pointlessly killed, illustrates, I suppose, that Hal's strategy, if we can call it, of making himself seem to be a bit of a waster so he can surprise everyone, is a good idea. Although robbery is perhaps pushing it a bit far.

Underlying this is a sense that something is rotten in the state of England; Henry's speech about rebels at the climax, given his own actions, rings hollow, and it is the rebels, not him, who speak of honour. The only hope lies in the next generation.

Interesting, then, that this more rotten England gets a far grittier and more lived-in mediaeval look than did Richard II, which seemed much more on the High Middle Ages. We get constant contrasts between earthy taverns and a cold, grey, empty, joyless castle which really emphasises, in the use of setting, how this play cuts between two very different worlds, one joyless and rooted in a terrible sin, the other merry but ultimately without honour or values. For all it's japes, and its sack, and its misguided honour, this is an England that has lost its way. It's notable that the final battle is shot mainly in close shots to give a sense of confusion, chaos and claustrophobia. There's bitter snow, and fog clouding everything. The battle is won, but things are not right. This generation has failed, and the throne itself is still in question.

Jeremy Irons is superb as the recast, older, rather depressed Henry IV, who has gained only misery by seizing the throne. Simon Russell Beale, my first Falstaff, made me fall in love with the character and want to see more interpretations. But I suspect it's Tom Hiddleston, Loki himself, who will make the biggest impression over the three plays. There are broad hints of how his character will develop, and I'm looking forward to what happens with his performance. Perhaps it's the battle scene, more even than the play-acting in the tavern, that points the way. This is not Falstaff's world, but Hal belongs.

Richard II (Rupert Goold, 2012)

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings."

This is the first of four plays to be screened by the BBC under the title of "The Hollow Crown". Coming next will be Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, followed by Henry V, all of them, like this play, filmed as full dramas, with elaborate costumes, sumptuous location filming and the full visual feast of modern, high budget, television drama. And that isn't something that has been done since the 1970s, a very different age of television. This is not one of those occasional BBC 4 dramas, based on current theatre runs, which still have one foot in the theatre, with only limited use of the moving camera. This is the full medium of television being applied to Shakespeare. Modern methods of visual storytelling, unheard of the 1590s, are fully utilised. Realism is the rule; the locations and settings straightforwardly evoke the real world of the late fourteenth century. This is television, not theatre.

And that's very interesting, because there's a constant tension between the theatrical medium of Shakespeare's playscript and the medium of television to which that script is being applied here. Modern television drama, with its fast pace and fast cutting, adheres to a philosophy of "show, don't tell". This fits awkwardly with those scenes, so frequent in Shakespeare, where characters describe battles, gruesome happenings and other things which happen off-stage. This was a necessary device for the Elizabethan stage, of course, where it was best to avoid having to depict such things. But it sits awkwardly with the medium of television, where beheadings by the cliffside and location filming at real beaches, woods and castles are all possible. There are many scenes in which speeches are juxtaposed with a visual depiction of what is being described. On the one hand, all of this is brilliant. On the other hand, it is often made awkwardly obvious that Shakespeare was writing for a very different medium.

That isn't always the case, of course. The television medium can often serve instead to emphasise meaning; Richard's last minute decision to cancel the trial by combat between Mowbray and Bolingbroke is made all the more effective by the visual depiction of the sheer expense of organising the event. Nevertheless, there's a tension between the two mediums.

Ben Whishaw is superb as a fey and effete Richard, famously based on Michael Jackson and a little reminiscent of John Hurt's Caligula from I, Clavdivs.  It's a stand-out performance, showing us a Richard who seems to care little for affairs of state, and robs his nobles for his wars as but a casual afterthought. The pet monkey pretty much symbolises his fickle, pleasure-loving nature. This is a man who ill befits the rather warlike nature of mediaeval kingship. He's a camp king in a very butch world. I recall at University I studied this play in conjunction with Marlowe's Edward II. The parallels are strong in any case, but such a very camp Richard makes them all the more so. This is the first time I've seen Ben Whishaw (I've yet to see The Hour), but he's truly a revelation here. I don't doubt that his Hamlet would probably have been superb.

The rest of the cast is hugely impressive, too, from Rory Kinnear's troubled, more than usually conscientious yet determined Bolingbroke to Patrick Stewart's outstanding John of Gaunt. The "This Sceptred Isle" speech is delivered slowly, with deliciously bitter irony, in one of the standout moments of the production. Yet the highlight is undoubtedly Whishaw's self-pity, as power slips gradually away from Richard. David Morrissey's merciless Northumberland and Tom Goodman-Hill's anxious Sir Stephen Scrope are also worth singling out for praise. The play's awesomely rich themes of the nature of kingship, whether any subject has the right to depose a king anointed by God, and how Richard, in denying Bolingbroke his rights of succession, thereby undermines his own, are brought out anew by the performances. These themes may seem as if they belong to another age, but they don't really. They point forward, of course, to the follies and the death of Charles I. And we see the same power relationships everywhere, whether within the ranks of the Mafia, in the boardroom, or in the dynamics of teenage gangs. Because that's what mediaeval aristocrats and kings always were: gangsters.

This is only the beginning, of course. Henry ends the play in deep penitence, filled with a mixture of regret and paranoia. He's dismayed to hear of Richard's death. This original sin will lead to profound and bloody consequences…

Julius Caesar (Gregory Doran, 2012)

"How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?"

There's a lot of Shakespeare on BBC4 at the moment, and it's all piling up, unwatched, rebuking me. I did a degree in English, many years ago, and yet it's possible that I haven't read or seen any Shakespeare since. I've only read around twelve of the forty-and-counting plays, which is sort of pathetic. My degree certificate is staring sternly at me as I write this: something must be done, and so it shall.

So here's the first of many of these reviews. Generally they'll be looking at the BBC4 productions, which are essentially filmed versions of recent stage productions but with some concessions to the medium of television, although that won't always be so, as in the case of the forthcoming history plays. There'll also be films and whatnot.

This particular production is very topical indeed, being that it's currently running in Stratford upon Avon. There's a contemporary African aesthetic, with everything about the play's look and directorial style strongly suggesting the slow slide from liberty to authoritarianism, driven by one charismatic figure, that seems to be happening in places like Uganda and Ethiopia. There's also, of course, a hint of the Arab Spring. The cast is led by the outstanding Patterson Joseph as Brutus, a slightly subdued Cyril Nri as Cassius and Ray Fearon as Mark Antony.

Lots of people don't like the idea of Shakespeare in modern or non-contemporary dress. I do. For one thing, certain plays (including this one) are very common, and it's nice to have a little variation in the visuals. For another, the anachronisms are already there. These are Romans who hear clocks chiming and allude often, and eloquently, to the effects of the four humours. Realism has its place, but to be shackled to it would be dull indeed. And the setting serves to emphasise certain of the plays themes, and remind us of their universalism. There's nothing exclusively Roman about the power relationships we see here. The only unfortunate side to modern dress is that it renders awkward those features of Shakespeare that reflect the style or technical limitations of the time, with battles always taking place out of shot and wives dying off-screen

It's hard to judge the full effect of the setting, though; it's devised for the stage and, although the crowd scenes (including Mark Antony's speech) are essentially just a camera pointed at the stage, the rest of the play was filmed on location, hence the plotting between Cassius, Brutus and Casca takes place in a urinal, complete with mimed peeing(!), while the "ambitious" Caesar is killed, symbolically, on a broken escalator. I'm almost tempted to go hunting for symbolism in the peeing, too…

The only version I'd previously seen was the 1953 film version, in which the most prominent and foregrounded performers were Marlon Brando as Mark Antony and John Gielgud as Cassius. So I was a little surprised, at first, to see the superb Patterson Joseph cast as a surprisingly wily Brutus, whereas Cassius might have been a more natural part for him. But I came to appreciate this more intelligent Brutus, calculating but never cynical. Nri's Cassius, meanwhile, was far more fallible, and less Machiavellian, than I'd expected. Fearon's performance was strong, but there were too similarities to Brando's iconic portrayal to fully escape from its shadow.

I love this play, and there are always new things to be seen. I love Shakespeare's cynical yet true depictions of the fickleness and murderousness of the mob, who are easy prey to demagoguery and mistake Cinna the poet for Cinna the conspirator as easily as they mistake paediatricians for paedophiles. There's a universal human truth right there. And Mark Antony's speeches, cynical and practical deployments of rhetoric though they are, are things of such beauty.

It would be wrong, I think, to judge the production too much by its camerawork, as it has only one foot in the televisual medium, at best. But the scene in which Antony and Octavian (a Laurent Kabila-like Ivanno Jeremiah) casually discuss their proscriptions is nicely punctuated by short, sharp cuts to hooded figures being shot in the back of the head, which I found very powerful.

Perhaps the production is let down slightly by the sometimes overly restrained performance of Cyril Nri, but the use of the African setting works well, and Patterson Joseph is outstanding.

Throne of Blood (1957)

"Without ambition, a man is not a man."

I've been wanting to do a Kurosawa for ages. The only reason I haven't done one yet is because the DVDs are at a hard-to-get-at part of the cupboard. I'm going to make a concerted effort to start watching some of those back-of-the cupboard DVDs in the next few weeks, instead of just plonking them straight from the front pile. Honestly, the things I do for you, my readers…

This is a fairly straight remake of Macbeth with the obvious cultural adjustments, although of course we should remember that a film is a fully completed work, whereas a play script is just a script, so it's not a like-for-like comparison. This would have been just as extraordinarily, and would have had Akira Kurosawa's imprint stamped all over it, even if it had been a straight version of Shakespeare's script. But it isn't. It's very different. The characters are absolutely the same psychologically, but the means by which this is expressed is fascinatingly different.

Shakespeare's work is fundamentally about language, about expressing philosophicasl musings, psychological depths, humour and pretty much the whole world through the medium of words. What's fascinating about what Kurosawa has done here is that we have the opposite situation entirely; this film is to a large extent about the absence of language. There are many, many scenes which consist of long silences, characters communicating only (but very effectively) by facial expression. Characters are generally terse and inarticulate, and struggle to communicate with each other. The scene in which Washizu and Miki struggle to speak coherently about the prophecy they have just heard is highly revealing. The film even begins with a garbled series of reports by messengers, which is highly appropriate.

The scene where Miki welcomes Washizu into Cobweb Castle after his murder of Lord Tsuzuki  is fascinating: the two of them walk in silence, with Miki speaking only to briefly say that he will support Washizu because he will be able to defend the castle. It's left ambiguous whether he realises what Washizu has done but is supporting him for pragmatic reasons. The point is what's not said, the absence of language.

The exception to all this, of course, is the highly articulate, scheming Asaji, the only major female character. Making the Lady Macbeth figure the only articulate figure in the entire film (except, perhaps, for several examples of Kurosawa's signature use of peasants as a kind of Greek chorus) makes articulacy appear to be devious and feminine, whilst inarticulacy is made to look weak and masculine.

Asaji induces a sense of paranoia in Washizu, constantly persuading to act by insisting that others are conspiring against him, which is something of a change of emphasis from the source material. This is further entrenched by the many, many instances of bad omens, which intensify the sense of foreboding. There's a constant sense that something is going bto happen and this is deepened, I think, by Kuropsawa's decisions to keep the dramatic events- the battles and murders- firmly off-screen. For Shakespeare, keeping these scenes off-stage was a rather prosaic, practical necessity but for Kurosawea, I think, it's a way of delaying the pay-off until the end.  And Washizu's death scene, with the hail of arrows and some incredible facial acting from the legendary Toshiro Mifune, is the best thing ever.

As we'd expect, everything looks great, with lots of murky fog, a suitably labyrinthine forest and gnarled trees, and Kurasawa's trademark wipes that George Lucas loves so much. I enjoyed that a lot.