I have always been a movie buff, from the time I was a little kid. I remember my mom taking me to see Disney’s Robin Hood at the theater (you know, the one where Robin Hood and Marian are foxes, and Prince John is a thumb-sucking lion…PJ? PJ! Oh, I like that…Hiss, put it on my luggage!). And I remember going to my first drive-in movie with my brother - Young Frankenstein.  Probably not the best movie for a 6-year-old to watch - I believe a lot of the humor was lost on me until later years!

But movies have always been important to me and played a big part in my life…especially historical epics!  Oh, my…that year that both Braveheart and Rob Roy came out?!?!  I thought I’d died and gone to historical cinema heaven! And, of course, being a huge Shakespeare/Elizabethan buff, I adore movies like Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love.

But what on earth does this have to do with Staging Shakespeare? Well, one thing that has been very helpful, not only to my cast but also to the students in my English classes, is to teach Shakespeare’s plays utilizing good film versions of the plays. Of course, when I teach Henry V to my 8th graders, we watch the Branagh film - read one act, watch the act; read the next act, watch that act, etc. When I teach Hamlet, we watch bits of both the Gibson and the Branagh films, and when I teach Macbeth, I’ve found that I prefer the BBC version of the play with Nicol Williamson (remember him as Merlin in Excalibur?) over the Ian McKellen/Judi Dench play, although I like to show scenes from both. (Speaking of Excalibur - Here’s some trivia for you - Cherie Lunghi, who played Guenevere, also did a fabulous Beatrice in the BBC’s Much Ado About Nothing! Kind of cool that two Excalibur cast members also did some mean Shakespeare!)

So back in May and June, when the weather here was icky and we couldn’t start rehearsing outside, our cast spent a great deal of time working on the text - reading parts aloud; figuring out what various words and phrases meant; determining what their characters might be thinking and feeling at any given moment. Once we were finished, we would watch whatever scenes we had worked on that day from the BBC version of Shrew, with John Cleese as Petruchio. Talk about a HOOT! John Cleese is just a great actor anyway, but seeing him come in for his wedding to Katharina, dressed in some hideous burlap-type vest, no shirt on underneath, but an enormous yellow sunflower stuck to the vest…and a hat with the longest feathers sticking out in front of it…I could go on…I won’t…except to mention that Grumio had some weird face painted on his bare belly, under a very similar ensemble as that of Petruchio’s! The kids loved it, and they saw some really outstanding acting in the process. We also watched the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor film version, which is such an enjoyable movie, especially when you consider that Burton and Taylor were married at the time they made the movie…it definitely created quite the dynamic for their performances!

Using film versions of the plays seems almost like a no-brainer, really. In this day and age of audio and visual technology, why wouldn’t a teacher or director want to use film to help their students really get into Shakespeare? The only downside I can see is that you don’t ever want your actors to feel like they have to play a part exactly like some famous actor did it. I was hesitant about showing the Branagh Much Ado last year, simply because I didn’t want anyone to feel like there was only one way to play these characters. But I also showed them the BBC version (the one with Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice) in order to demonstrate that there are definitely different ways of approaching the characters, the scenery, the costumes, the everything of putting together a stage production…as long as you don’t deviate from Shakespeare’s text!

Just a suggestion, too, concerning those BBC plays - If you look for them on Amazon or other commercial websites, you’ll probably only find them available to purchase as sets - all of the comedies, all of the histories, or even all 37 plays in one huge bundle. If you are interested in buying them individually, go to the Folger Library website - www.folger.edu - and you can purchase them through their gift shop, one at a time. I’ve slowly been building my collection this way, purchasing the ones I need for school or for whatever plays I am considering directing in the future.

And finally…a little ritual that I started last summer as our production neared completion and we were almost to Opening Night. When I start to worry about the play coming together, actors learning their lines, costumes being finished, sets being painted, but I know I’ve done everything I can do and it’s up to the kids, I pop in my copy of Shakespeare in Love.  If I have time, I’ll watch the whole film, but sometimes I’m just too tired to stay up and watch it after my children are in bed, so instead, I will skip to the scene where Will’s Romeo and Juliet is about to start.  Henslowe’s tailor, playing the Chorus, is stuttering backstage, and Will looks like he would rather slit his wrists than let the play go on.  Then the Chorus gets pushed out onto the stage, and it almost appears that he won’t be able to get the words out…but suddenly, his voice is perfect, exclaiming, “Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene….” I absolutely love that entire part of the movie, where they show what it might have been like the very first time R&J was on the stage…except, of course, where a gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow saves the day! And then, when the play is over, and the audience just sits there, like they didn’t know what hit them…until finally, thunderous applause and ovations! Ah, yes…it helps me sleep better that night!

Among Henries, the Sixth never gets quite the same attention as his predecessors. In the canon of Shakespeare’s histories, the chronicles of Henry IV (two plays often combined as one) and Henry V are far more popular. This makes a new production of all three parts of Henry VI (along with its historical follow-up, Richard III) notable. A rapturous review of this new interpretation of the cycle notes the many values of the Henry VI plays as well as their recent stage history. As the author notes, the plays have evolved from a kind of Tudor pageant to a more complex historical opus in the past half century.

One of the main points that dogs the Henry VI plays is the questionable authorship of the first play in the trilogy. Written very early in Shakespeare’s career while young Will was in his early twenties, many have questioned exactly how much Shakespeare contributed to the initial installment. As the reviewer notes, some editions have published the plays under alternate titles derived from Quarto editions of the plays (rather than the standard Folio texts used). Some even choose to exclude the first part altogether on the basis of its iffy authorship.

Finally, some take umbrage at treating the history plays in any kind of grouping because they were not written in chronological order. I am inclined to take the more relaxed perspective adopted by the reviewer. The history plays are like a large family: wildly different, not always functional as a group, but stuck with each other for good or ill.

When you think about Henry V, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Do you imagine a strung out drug addict? Could you picture the famous Agincourt speech delivered by a working class male stripper? What if Hal were a zombie killer or the lover of a closeted priest? Could see cannibalism working in a production of arguably the favorite of Shakespeare’s History plays? Could you imagine a Henry V impervious to pain fighting none other than Her Majesty’s most famous, martini-loving superspy? If none of these descriptions fits your vision of the character, then you may need to rethink that vision.
The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) in Glasgow recently announced a festival of Shakespearean-themed performance and music entitled “Raising the Bard.” The centerpiece of this event is a performance of Henry V starring Robert Carlyle in the title role. Carlyle is arguably one of Scotland’s busiest actors and has played all of the roles mentioned above and many more. If you don’t recognize him by his name, you would certainly recognize his face. The fact that Carlyle falls a bit under the radar is a testament to how well he disappears into each of his roles, whether they are in blockbusters or independent European films. Carlyle will undoubtedly bring an edge to Henry and a decidedly contemporary feel. This brilliant character actor is more than up to the challenge of one of The Bard’s more demanding kings. Also, after acting opposite Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist, Agincourt will be a piece of cake.

When Kenneth Branagh filmed his unedited Hamlet in 1996, it elicited a variety of responses. Some carped about the sheer length of the film (four hours plus), while others questioned the integrity of the text (e.g. which versions are we using/combining to create this “complete” Hamlet?). Regardless of your level of appreciation of the film, it does test the level of Bard fanaticism. By this logic, if you love Shakespeare’s words, the more of them there are, the happier you will be.

The Royal Shakespeare Company in England is taking this idea to the ultimate limit. They are producing no less than eight of The Bard’s plays as a history cycle: Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, Henry VI Parts I, II and III, and Richard III. Though not written in this order, this sequence represents a chronological presentation of the plays. Shakespeare’s other two histories, King John and Henry VIII, do not feature any of the overlapping characters and story threads that the other eight do, which presumably explains their absence from this presentation. All told, this reportorial approach took nearly three years to prepare and would demand about twenty-four hours of the audience’s time to view in its entirety.

This is a bold undertaking in a number of ways. First, it demands the consistency of a single, extended play, even though the works were not written that way. Secondly, the histories are generally less popular than the tragedies and comedies, with Henry V and Richard III getting most of the face time. If it succeeds, the RSC’s cycle will be nothing short of…uh…historical.

For those critics who found Kenneth Branagh’s every-word-is-sacred version of Hamlet to be a bit top heavy, a new Bard production will prove even more challenging. In a bold theatrical effort, the company in question is producing all of Shakespeare’s histories as a complete cycle. This marathon of storytelling is something of a mini-trend, with some companies presenting the plays in the order they were written while others place them in chronological order (according to history).

While the approach to such productions are undoubtedly epic with a capital E, I’m not sure what other purpose the conceit serves. As in Harry Potter and even The Lord of the Rings, such an epic treatment can be both a success and a hindrance. In such a vast (and some might say overblown) landscape, the small moments and nuances might get lost. In other words, in their desire to bring out all that is held sacred by fans of a given work or works, artists can potentially drown their audiences in significance. Shakespeare’s works are already writ large, and I don’t know that piling them on top of each other will make them anything other than, well, bigger.