SOURCE: Phillips, Stephen J. “‘Adapted for Television’: David Thacker's Measure for Measure.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 35, no. 1 (January 1999): 23-33.

[In the following review, Phillips examines David Thacker’s 1999 television adaptation of Measure for Measure for British broadcast, highlighting the cuts, transpositions, and characterization decisions that Thacker made for the televised medium.]

In the autumn of 1994 the British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted a series of programmes that explored the work of Shakespeare. This coincided with a major festival at the Royal Shakespeare Company's London base. The BBC offerings included an overview of the cultural impact of the Bard, documentaries showing directors Adrian Noble and Michael Bogdanov at work in very different contexts, classic Shakespearean films, and a new television production of Measure for Measure by David Thacker. This was the first major British production of a Shakespeare play for television since the BBC/Time-Life series ended in 1985.¹

Desmond Davis had directed the BBC/Time-Life Measure for Measure which was transmitted in Britain in February 1979. The series had begun transmission in 1978 and met with charges of dullness. Davis' Measure for Measure, however, was acclaimed. Writing in Literature/Film Quarterly in 1984, H. R. Coursen judged that it “remains one of the best” productions in the series. He argued that the play “seems almost to have been written for television”; it is a problem play, a genre that tends towards melodrama, and television audiences familiar with soaps are able to respond to this. Measure for Measure is built upon “a series of vivid one-on-one confrontations” which can be accommodated within the space of a television screen.²

Much that Coursen says is valid. Television can serve some Shakespeare plays better than others. It is not comfortable with crowd scenes; exteriors always seem phoney. The close-up is its characteristic unit, encouraging the viewer to scrutinise the actor's face. It has conditioned audiences to expect a story to unfold in a series of relatively short sequences.

Some features of the medium make it inherently unsuited to Shakespeare. British television plays rarely exceed ninety minutes; the individual programmes that make up an average evening's viewing are considerably less. If Shakespeare's plays are to be successfully transposed from the stage to the studio they must undergo a process of adaptation. Unfortunately certain restrictions prevented this from happening during the making of the BBC/Time-Life series with the result that some productions were simply bad television. I do not share Coursen's readiness to acclaim Desmond Davis' contribution to the series, and will compare this production with David Thacker's version which, I will argue, benefited from exploring ways of bringing Shakespeare to television that the BBC/Time-Life series denied itself.

Cedric Messina, who originated the series and was its producer from 1978 to 1979, wanted his directors to create productions that would be “accessible to audiences throughout the world”. They were to “let the plays speak for themselves”.³ Two major consequences of this policy were that directors could not make substantial alterations to the text and that they had to set their production either in Shakespeare's time or the period in which the story took place. However, Messina also advised them to remember that television viewers would have a very different set of expectations to a theatre audience. He wanted to make Shakespeare's plays available to a mass public via a mass medium. The language of television drama had to be respected so Messina preferred to engage experienced television directors whose experience with Shakespeare was secondary.

Messina's instructions created a double-bind situation. Directors were being asked to observe the conventions of television drama while making minimal changes to scripts that were not written for the medium. If they adapted the script so that it made better television drama, they broke one of Messina's key rules; if they kept to the rules, the result was dull television.

Unlike Messina's chosen directors, David Thacker had had considerable stage experience, which included work with the RSC, and had directed two previous productions of Measure for Measure. His television production of A Doll's House for the BBC in 1993 had won the BAFTA Best Single Drama award. Thacker was not bound by a house style such as that imposed by Messina. The opening credits of his Measure for Measure describe it as having been “adapted for television by David Thacker”. Shakespeare's play was given a modern-dress setting and major textual alterations were made to allow the editing rhythms of television to be exploited.

The opening two scenes of the 1979 production run for approximately nine-and-a-half minutes. The Alexander text was used with line 25 being cut from I.i and lines 46-55 and 106-08 from I.ii. The text published by the BBC hardly differs from a theatre prompt-book. By contrast a transcription of Thacker's adaptation of the same two scenes looks like the script of a television play.⁴

By inserting sequences from I.ii into the first scene, Thacker is taking account of the expectations of a television audience who are not used to lengthy exposition scenes. He cut the exchanges, which would be incomprehensible banter to the majority of television viewers, between the two gentlemen and Lucio. The former do not appear again in the play and their presence here is only likely to confuse a mass audience unfamiliar with Shakespeare. Thacker also used the language of television to foreground a major theme of Measure for Measure—the handy-dandy nature of morality. By intercutting scenes in the Ducal apartments with scenes in Mistress Overdone's establishment the audience is prepared to question the morality of the politicians. The Duke is linked with Lucio as we see both of them drinking whisky. The joyless duties of political leadership are contrasted with the sensual pleasures offered by the city's nightlife.

Thacker's version runs for about eleven minutes but moves at a faster pace than Davis' textually faithful rendition. There are more moments of silence in Thacker's production where the story is narrated by what is seen rather than by what is said, as is appropriate in a powerfully visual medium. More of Shakespeare's text can be discarded in a television production than would be possible in the theatre because the camera can pick out details that advance the story, and a television audience is accustomed to filling in the gaps as the plot-line unfolds. The Duke's long speech of praise and encouragement to Angelo (ll. 28-42) is replaced by a brief sequence in Mistress Overdone's brothel where we see Kate Keepdown and Lucio quarrelling. When the camera returns to the Ducal apartments the Duke, Escalus and Angelo are seated around a table and the Duke has got to the heart of the matter—the temporary transfer of his power to Angelo. It is clear to a television audience that time has passed and that the Duke has spent it briefing his deputy as he has already told Escalus he proposes to transfer power to Angelo while he is absent from the city.

The differing approaches to government taken by the Duke and Angelo are quickly and sharply demonstrated, using the characteristic strengths of the television medium. Tom Wilkinson plays the Duke as overwhelmed by the moral decay he sees around him. The images of a corrupt society that he watches on a wall-screen video as the opening credits are screened only provoke weariness and despair from the man who has failed to maintain respect for the law. The shutters of the room are drawn, books lie scattered around, and the Head of State seeks refuge in whisky. After the Duke's departure Angelo examines the chaotic room, looking disapprovingly at the empty whisky bottle he finds on the sofa. He plays the wall-screen video—images of hookers touting for custom, crack-smokers and cars set alight disgust him. Determinedly he searches for a book, finds the old, large tome he is looking for and takes it to the desk. While Escalus seems unready to assume his new responsibilities and says that he is unsure of the extent of his power, Angelo scours the pages of the book that will refresh his memory. Finally, he taps a page firmly, reassures Escalus, and pulls back the shutters. The camera cranes up and music swells. The shot establishes Angelo as a new broom who plans to sweep very clean. Much of this could be duplicated in the theatre but a director could not move so rapidly to the arrest of Claudio which takes place in the next sequence and then show Mistress Overdone being told the news by Pompey before following Claudio to prison where he is subjected to a strip search. As the camera follows him along the prison corridor the audience is made aware of the short, sharp shock that Angelo is preparing to administer to the city in an attempt to reverse its moral decline; the prison authorities are making arrangements to accommodate the expected rise in the number of inmates. Thacker returns to the brothel where Lucio hears of his friend's fate, leaves to “learn the truth of this”, and just escapes being arrested in the police raid that closes down the establishment.

A British audience would read Thacker's production not as a soap, as Coursen suggests could be the case with a television version of the play, but rather as a political thriller, a genre that was very popular during the 1980s and 1990s. Desmond Davis drew on horror films for the prison scenes with “flambeaux and red lighting and dwarf jailers”;⁵ Thacker's audience were confronted with prison officers in modern uniforms who had access to closed-circuit surveillance of the cells and an up-to-date mortuary. Aspects of Shakespeare's text that would jar with this screen treatment were cut; all references to Vienna were omitted and Constable Elbow did not appear.⁶ Purists will complain that such radical cuts call into question the Shakespearean nature of this Measure for Measure. If Shakespeare cannot be done well on television is it worth doing at all?

Such arguments overlook the fact that theatre companies in Shakespeare's day clearly adapted their repertoire to suit different venues—what worked at the Globe might not work at Court or on tour. Thacker is doing no worse than Shakespeare's own colleagues did to his scripts. By adapting Measure for Measure more closely to the medium of television than Desmond Davis did Thacker draws his audience into the play. Those viewers who are less than committed to Shakespeare might well have been reaching for the handset by the time Lucio and the two gentlemen were halfway through their exchange in the 1979 production. Thacker first establishes that this version will work as a television play; when he has gained an attentive audience he wields the blue pencil less freely.

Many of his cuts and transpositions in the middle section of the play are made to create short individual sequences more in keeping with the nature of television writing. For instance, Thacker breaks I.iv into two scenes. Lines 1-5 now come after I.iii and Isabella's recent arrival in the nunnery is signalled by her long hair which is being cut off by Francisca. The scene between the Duke and Friar Thomas comes next allowing time to elapse for Lucio to reach the nunnery and for Isabella to appear with a cropped head. The rest of I.iv is then played with no more cuts than might be made in a stage production. The result is more satisfying television which conforms to the viewers' expectations of the medium with regard to both editing conventions and the use of music. The latter is a powerful narrative device in television and film which Thacker skilfully employs to a degree that would be unacceptable in the contemporary theatre.

Thacker makes few major cuts in V.i, at 537 lines the longest scene in the play, and in his production it runs for just under twenty-six minutes.⁷ The Duke's return is covered by a television news team which allows Thacker to show other characters' responses to events taking place in the Ducal apartments as they watch the broadcast in different locations without viewers losing the dramatic thread. We are familiar with politicians addressing the nation through the electronic media so are readily caught up in the drama whereas the Duke's public return in the 1979 production which used a hoard of extras at an exterior location was less involving.

Thacker heightened the drama by cutting the lines in which Isabella reveals that Friar Lodowick, whom we know to be the disguised Duke, has warned her that he may speak against her (IV.vi.5-8). The effect was enhanced further by inserting sequences at the prison where Claudio was led to mock execution and then watched the Duke's broadcast in the Provost's office. When the Duke refused to believe Isabella's charge against Angelo, Claudio expressed his contempt for the blindness and corruption of the political classes, using lines 114-17 from I.ii:

Thus can the demigod Authority
Make us pay down for our offence by weight
The words of heaven: on whom it will, it will;
On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just.

For a moment the viewer is led to believe that the Duke may double-cross Isabella exactly as Angelo had. The sight of Claudio alive also makes Isabella's decision to intercede with Mariana for the life of Angelo all the more momentous and moving. In Shakespeare, Claudio is not seen again after IV.ii until his appearance at the end of the play; here the television audience is reminded how significant it is that Isabella does not know that her brother is still alive. Thacker's inserted sequences at the prison break up a long scene in a manner acceptable to a television audience while not obscuring the development of this crucial final scene. He also makes some important dramatic points that would be difficult to realise on stage.

The television medium allows Thacker to illuminate other moments in the play which usually go for nothing. David Bradley's Barnadine was a pitiful alcoholic who beneath the bravado feared death and threatened his would-be executioners with a broken bottle. The mobility of television allowed Thacker to hold the shot on Barnadine after he had slammed his cell door on the Duke, Abhorson and Pompey, and to show him sinking down onto his straw and sobbing. A close-up of his face allowed us to see his expression change from one of resignation to incredulity to sincere gratitude when the Duke forgave him in the final scene. This was a man capable of change and not a character provided for mere comic relief.

Thacker also used the television medium to show another side of Pompey. When he was thrown into a cell he found his fellow-prisoner was Ragozine who lay in bed dying of fever. Thacker had Pompey wipe the sweat from his brow while speaking his lines from III.ii:

'Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest was put down, and the worser allow'd by order of law a furr'd gown to keep him warm.

(ll. 5-7)

When he was taken from the cell to become Abhorson's assistant, Pompey looked back with sympathy at the dying man. Far from being a perverse misreading of the play, Thacker used such devices that would be difficult to duplicate on stage in order to question the validity of a system of justice that does not have a place for mercy. As the Duke demonstrates in the final scene, if absolute justice were administered few characters would escape punishment. From the opening images on the Duke's wall-screen video and the despairing tone of his voice, the viewers are encouraged to believe that the city is on the verge of anarchy and that a smack of firm government is long overdue. The close-up of Tom Wilkinson's face as he watches the confrontation between Claudio and Isabella in III.i on the prison's closed-circuit surveillance system foregrounds his reaction on hearing of Angelo's abuse of power for all viewers in a way that could only be achieved clumsily in a stage production. His readiness to pass the political buck has placed a man's life in jeopardy and this shocking responsibility strikes home. What we and the Duke learn through the prison scenes is that it is easy to speak of the need for firm government but more difficult to put it fairly into practice. Thacker's humanising of Barnadine and his treating of Ragozine as something more than a convenient head amplified the complex issues of Shakespeare's play.

Traditionally British television drama has been dominated by realism, especially with regard to character development. Thacker adapts Shakespeare's treatment of character to the dominant mode of television. Angelo is fleshed out during the Duke's speech to Friar Thomas in I.iii where—as we are told that “Lord Angelo is precise; / Stands at a guard with Envy; scarce confesses / That his blood flows; or that his appetite / Is more to bread than stone” (ll. 50-3)—we are shown Angelo working late at night, laying down his pen, and producing a photograph of himself with Mariana from his desk drawer. Angelo's personality is deepened for us by this indication of a side to him that neither the Duke's observations nor Lucio's claim that he is “a man whose blood is very snow-broth” (I.iv.57-8) lead us to expect. When both Escalus and Isabella ask him in Act II to consider whether he might once have been tempted to commit a similar fault to Claudio's, we know that Angelo does have something to hide. His response to Isabella is not beyond the bounds of realistic character development given what we now know of him as a result of Thacker's interpolation. But as a consequence, II.iv may lose the shocking impact that Shakespeare clearly intended it to have by structuring his plot the way he did.

Thacker's decision to adapt Shakespeare's mode of characterisation to the conventions of television realism sometimes weakens the production. He fails to find a suitable technique for incorporating asides and soliloquies into his chosen medium. He eschews both direct address to camera and voice-over. The former would obviously violate the bounds of realism but the latter has become an acceptable convention in television drama. Instead Thacker has his actors speak asides sotto voce which simply looks absurd when Corin Redgrave delivers Angelo's “She speaks and 'tis such sense / That my sense breeds with it” (II.ii.142-3) while Juliet Aubrey's Isabella sits only inches away from him!

Thacker accepts and exploits television's tradition of realism and, consequently, aspects of Shakespeare's plot begin to strain the viewer's credulity. The Duke's disguise becomes unbelievable in a medium such as television when characters share the close-up together. Kenneth Colley in Desmond Davis' 1979 version only attempted to mask his face when approached by Escalus in III.ii and when appearing in the public square in the last scene, and made no real effort to disguise his voice on these occasions. Tom Wilkinson brought the cowl of his habit forward or concealed his face in shadow, and adopted an Irish accent. Thacker also helped the viewers to accept the Duke's disguise by having Lucio suggest that he suspected Friar Lodowick was more than he claimed to be. Once again Shakespeare's characters were brought within the bounds of television realism. As a result it is hard to accept the bed-trick in Thacker's production: would Angelo really be unaware that the young, crop-headed Isabella has swopped places with the middle-aged and generously coiffured Mariana?

Such points can be accommodated in the theatre where a mixed mode of production is currently acceptable. Television generally lacks this flexibility at present. However, this is not an inherent feature of the medium as some of Dennis Potter's plays have demonstrated. Television directors of Shakespeare must adapt his work to the changing conventions of the medium just as stage directors respond to changes in the theatrical climate if they wish their productions to have any vitality; the alternative—to adapt Peter Brook's phrase—is Deadly Television. If justice is to be done to a young and rapidly developing medium, the processes of adapting Shakespeare for television will have to be more radical—and undoubtedly offend more purists—than those which are employed, without provoking so much as a murmur, when a version is prepared for the stage today.

Notes

1. I am excluding Othello, transmitted on BBC2 in 1990, which was based on Trevor Nunn's 1989 stage production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and television versions aimed at schools such as the Animated Tales.

2. H. R. Coursen, “Why Measure for Measure?”, reprinted in: Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays and Reviews, ed. J. C. Bulman & H. R. Coursen (Hanover, 1988), pp. 179-84 (pp. 179, 182). The play has rarely received a screen treatment and there is no record of its having been televised in English before: see K. S. Rothwell & A. H. Melzer, Shakespeare on Screen: An International Filmography and Videography (London, 1990).

3. Messina as quoted in J. C. Bulman, “The BBC Shakespeare and ‘House Style’”, in: Bulman & Coursen, pp. 50-60 (pp. 50, 51). Both Graham Holderness (“Radical Potentiality and Institutional Closure: Shakespeare in Film and Television”, in: Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. J. Dollimore & A. Sinfield [Manchester, 1985], pp. 182-201) and Elijah Moshinsky (Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary?, ed. J. Elsom [London, 1989], pp. 114-39) discuss the institutional pressures on directors involved with the BBC/Time-Life series. However, Susan Willis concludes, “that we have the televised Shakespeare series at all is entirely due to Messina; that we have the Shakespeare series we have and not perhaps a better, more exciting one is also in large part due to Messina” (The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon [Chapel Hill, 1991], p. 24).

4. The BBC TV Shakespeare: Measure for Measure (London, 1979). I have transcribed Thacker's adaptation from a video recording. The transcription is reproduced here with his permission. In the absence of a commercially available video of the production this is a poor substitute, and it is, of course, my own interpretation of what Thacker chose that viewers should see and hear, of how he composed his shots, and of the actors' performances. David Thacker has seen this transcription and raised no objections to it. However, there will always remain a gap between the medium of print and the medium of drama, and all such descriptions of performance commit the heresy of paraphrase.

   The Ducal Apartments. The Duke watches wall-screen video from sofa; camera cranes down as music swells. Shutters closed; room dark. Images of hookers touting for custom, down-and-outs, burning cars, male stripper. Freezes video.

   DUKE

   (wearily) Escalus.

   ESCALUS

   My lord.

   DUKE

   Of government the properties to unfold

   Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse.

   Sith your own science exceeds the lists of all advice

   My strength can give you. The nature of our people,

   Our city's institutions, and the terms

   For common justice, you are as pregnant in

   As any we remember. Here is your commission

   From which we would not (with emphasis) have you warp.

   (To female PA) Call hither,

   I say, bid come before us, (pause; ominously) Angelo.

   For you must know we have

   Elected him our absence to supply;

   Lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love,

   And given his deputation all the organs

   Of our own power. What think you of it?

   (Sips tumbler of whisky)

   ESCALUS

   If any be of worth

   To undergo such ample grace and honour,

   It is Lord Angelo.

   ANGELO

   Always obedient to your Grace's will,

   I come to know your pleasure.

   Brothel. Mistress Overdone holds Kate Keepdown's child.

   KATE Keepdown:

   Thou art always figuring discases in me but thou art full of error; I am sound. (Storms upstairs)

   LUCIO:

   Well, not, as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast on thee.

   The Ducal Apartments. All seated at table.

   DUKE

   Hold, therefore, Angelo—

   In our remove be thou at full ourself;

   Mortality and mercy

   Live in thy tongue and heart. Escalus,

   Though first in question, is thy secondary.

   Take thy commission.

   ANGELO

   Now, good my lord,

   Let there be some more test made of my metal,

   Before so noble and so great a figure

   Be stamp'd upon it.

   DUKE

   (Tetchily; Firmly) No more evasion!

   We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice

   Proceeded to you. Your scope is as mine own,

   So to enforce or qualify the laws

   As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand;

   I'll privily away. (Putting on overcoat) I love the people,

   But do not like to stage me to their eyes;

   Though it do well, I do not relish well

   Their loud applause and Aves vehement;

   Nor do I think the man of safe discretion

   That doth affect it. (Warmly to Escalus) Fare you well.

   To the hopeful execution do I leave you

   Of your commissions.

   Brothel

   KATE Keepdown:

   Thou art a wicked villain! (Bites Lucio's hand) Do I speak feelingly now?

   LUCIO:

   I think thou dost; and with most painful feeling of thy speech.

   Kate Keepdown collects her child from Mistress Overdone, who passes a bottle of whisky to Lucio.

   The Ducal Apartments. Angelo finds an empty whisky bottle on the sofa; plays video-images of male stripper, crack-smoker, hookers touting for custom, burning cars. Angelo looks for a large book; takes it to the desk and consults it.

   ESCALUS

   (having looked through his brief)

   I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave

   To have free speech with you.

   A power I have, but of what strength and nature

   I am not yet instructed.

   ANGELO

   (Taps Book) We may soon our satisfaction have

   Touching that point.

   Angelo opens shutters; books are scattered everywhere, many open. Light floods the room, camera cranes up, music swells.

   Mistress Overdone's restaurant; Pompey as waiter. Police enter and arrest Claudio. He lunges forward as they pull away Juliet and is forced face-down onto the table.

   JULIET:

   Claudio!

   CLAUDIO:

   Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

   Pompey enters the brothel from the restaurant and changes his jacket.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   How now! what's the news with you?

   POMPEY:

   Yonder man is carried to prison.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Well, what has he done?

   POMPEY:

   A woman.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   But what's his offence?

   POMPEY:

   Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Is there a maid with child by him?

   POMPEY:

   No, but there's a woman with maid by him.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Who is it, I prithee?

   POMPEY:

   Signior Claudio; he's led to prison.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Claudio to prison? 'Tis not so.

   POMPEY:

   I saw him arrested; I saw him carried away. You have not heard of the proclamation, have you?

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   What proclamation, man?

   POMPEY:

   All whorehouses must be pluck'd down.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   What! all our houses of resort to be pull'd down?

   POMPEY:

   To the ground, mistress.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Well, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth!

   Prison. Claudio is led through a dark corridor. Bed frames are being carried through for the anticipated rise in the number of inmates now that Angelo has come to power. Claudio strips for body search.

   CLAUDIO

   Why dost thou show me thus unto the world?

   PRISON Officer

   (putting on rubber glove)

   I do it not in evil disposition,

   But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

   (Inserts his gloved fingers into Claudio's anus. Claudio winces.)

   Brothel

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   What shall become of me?

   POMPEY:

   Come, fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients. Though you change your place you need not change your trade; I'll be your tapster still. Pity will be taken on you; you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered.

   Lucio swaggers over to the bar with a girl and two male friends.

   LUCIO:

   Ah, behold, behold, Madam Mitigation! I've purchas'd as many diseases under her roof as come to—

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   There's one arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all.

   LUCIO:

   Who's that, I prithee?

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Marry, sir, that's Claudio, Signior Claudio.

   LUCIO:

   Claudio to prison? 'Tis not so.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   Ay, but I know 'tis so; and, what is more, within these three days his head to be chopp'd off.

   LUCIO:

   Art thou sure of this?

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   I am too sure of it; and it is for getting Madam Juliet with child.

   LUCIO

   (shrugging off girl's hand): Away! I'll go learn the truth of this.

   Hooker pukes over the bar.

   MISTRESS Overdone:

   What with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with the poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

   The brothel is raided. Pompey, stripper, hookers and clients try to flee. A mirror reflecting images from a soft porn film is smashed.

   The Provost's office at the prison. Claudio seated.

   LUCIO

   How now, Claudio, whence comes this restraint?

   CLAUDIO

   From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty.

5. The BBC TV Shakespeare: Measure for Measure, p. 19.

6. The city's crest does appear on official documents but the average viewer would not understand its significance. Desmond Davis' 1979 production was careful to specify the location with the opening credits being superimposed over a Renaissance drawing of Vienna.

7. Desmond Davis made no cuts at all to V.i which runs for just under twenty-nine minutes in his 1979 production.