© Glenn Saunders, 2010
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
16/05/2014
09/05/2014
20/04/2014
The Tempest
Julie Taymor, 2010.
In The Tempest, Julie Taymor creates
another visual feast from Shakespeare’s rich text. Eschewing ‘traditional’
modes of producing cinematic Shakespeares, she filmed the majority of her film
on the islands of Hawai’i – the black rock, deep orange gorges, lush tidal
forests, rocky shores, cliffs and colours the perfect complement for her vision
of sorcery, magic, redemption and love. Prospera’s island, as in the play,
becomes a reflection of isolation, creating a new hierarchical order in a ‘new
world’, and becomes a kind of antithetical evocation of Donne’s famous
observation that ‘no man is an island’. Helen Mirren’s Prospera is a force of
nature to be reckoned with, and while the decision to make Shakespeare’s
magician a woman was always going to be controversial for many people, I
actually prefer it to Shakespeare’s original, simply because there is so much
more at stake, between Prospera and Miranda, between both of them and
Ferdinand, between Caliban, towards the court and the usurping Duke. While her
visuals are excellent and her cast, crew and rough magic all superb, it doesn’t
quite reach the insane heights of Titus’
carnivalesque, though it is hard to distinguish exactly how or why.
05/04/2014
Twelfth Night
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Photo
by Brett Boardman for
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This is the
production I credit with showing me just how beautiful and heartbreaking
Shakespeare can be, the production with which I ‘got’ Shakespeare on stage. Lee
Lewis’ Twelfth Night was set in the
aftermath of the recent Victorian bushfires; the characters emerged out of the
blackness, exhausted and covered in soot, and proceeded to tell each other a
story, assuming the identities and roles of the characters in Shakespeare’s
play. Set around a giant pile of clothes and cardboard boxes – a refuge centre,
we assumed – Lewis delighted in the playful theatricality of disguise, the
simple answers to switching identities at the drop of a hat, and the joy and
aliveness was never far away from the very tangible sorrow and heartbreak that
sits at the core of all Shakespearean tragedy. Ending with a beautifully
effervescent dance to Katrina & The Waves’ ‘Walking on Sunshine,’ it was
hard not to be moved by the panache, verve and relish in theatrical delight
with which the production revelled.
Just Macbeth!
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Photo
by Wendy McDougall for
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Measure for Measure
Company B Belvoir, 2010
Continuing his
examination of power in Shakespeare’s plays (following Julius Caesar, and the divisive and behemoth War of the Roses, both for STC), Benedict Andrews turned his
distinctive aesthetic vision and directorial style to this, one of
Shakespeare’s more problematic comedies. Set in a revolving hotel room,
complete with sheer curtains, functioning shower, toilet, and television, not
to mention video cameras operated by the cast, it took a long hard look at a
society where, as he says, “pornography has become mainstream, sex tapes of celebrities
are public fodder, politicians speak in the name of God; where all private
lives are under constant surveillance, where everything is numbered and
consumable.” Culminating in one of Shakespeare’s classic ‘wonder upon wonder’
revelatory endings, outrage is heaped upon outrage, and
it leaves is bewildered, morally and imaginatively. This is not so much
Shakespeare as Andrews’ stream of falling coloured confetti, his cluttered mise
en scene, his over-reliance upon video close-ups, and his hyper-intellectualisation
of everything which seems to have no rational explanation in his on-stage
world.
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Photo
by Heidrun Löhr for Company B Belvoir.
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King Lear
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| Photo
by Wendy McDougall for |
Bell
Shakespeare’s 20th anniversary production was a sparse staging of
this popular tragedy. Beautifully minimalist, John Bell’s Lear raged with all
the futility of man against the storm as the revolving platform spun and spun
and spun, as Bree van Reyk’s percussion whipped and buffeted them, stripping Lear
and his Fool to their cores. While it didn’t quite hit the heights expected of
it, it was nonetheless a poetic and strong production, suitably majestic as
befitted the occasion.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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| Photo
by Jeff Busby for Opera |
Benjamin
Britten’s gorgeous orchestrations, shuffled-around scenes, and sung Shakespeare
might sound a bit of an unlikely combination, but when set upon Catherine
Martin’s sumptuous turn-of-the-century Indian Raj set, it seems as though it
was always meant to be. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, there were brilliant colours
– reds, pinks, yellows, blues, oranges, lush greens – enough richly coloured
silks, embroidered fabrics, sun-blasted linen and British pomp to set the scene
perfectly, and more than enough magic to swoon over. Without his dazzling
cinematic tricks, Luhrmann’s direction (here rehearsed by Julie Edmunson and
choreographer Belynda Buck) is clear, theatrical, and perfectly attuned to both
his aesthetic vision and the demands of the piece, and I am certain this is one
of the best ‘Dreams’ I have ever seen.
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