The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/uk
Wagner's 15-hour Ring Cycle … in two and a half minutes –
video
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/video/2013/sep/18/wagners-ring-cycle-2-mins-video
A short animation, with appropriately rousing musical
accompaniment, which manages to condense Wagner's magnificent 15-hour epic,
Ring Cycle – complete with gods, heroes, dragons, a castle in the sky, love
triangles, magic swords and Valkyries – into a succinct, coffee-break friendly
two and a half minutes. Get it? Got it? Good!
Much Ado
About Nothing – review
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/sep/20/much-ado-about-nothing-review-rylance
I am the last person to complain about senior citizens being
given free rein. I also hold Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in high
regard and thought their performances in Driving Miss Daisy were magical. But
casting them as Beatrice and Benedick is another matter and results, in Mark
Rylance's hands, in one of the most senseless Shakespearean productions I have
seen in a long time.
In some Shakespeare plays, such as The Tempest, age is
almost irrelevant. But Much Ado, which largely concerns the gulling of two
dedicated singletons into marriage, is one of Shakespeare's most socially
realistic comedies. Over the years I've seen it set perfectly plausibly during
the unification of Italy,
the revolution in Mexico and
the Raj in India.
But Rylance's idea of showing a group of American troops billeted in rural England in 1944
does nothing to explain the casting. You can't help wondering why Earl Jones's
Benedick is a boon companion to the youthful Claudio or why Redgrave's
Beatrice, however youthful in spirit, appears to be older than her uncle.
But what is hard to credit is the general incompetence of
the staging. As an example one has only to take the deception of Benedick into
the belief that Beatrice loves him: a scene that I have known reduce audiences
to helpless laughter. I should have thought a minimum requirement was that
Benedick should be physically present when Don Pedro casts the verbal bait so
we can see his facial reaction: here, incredibly, Benedick is off stage. The
subsequent speech when Benedick reasons himself into marriage climaxes in what
I always thought was the infallibly funny line, "No, the world must be
peopled." Delivered, as it is here, by the well-seasoned Earl Jones it
falls flat as a pancake.
Redgrave has similar problems in persuading us that Beatrice
is a woman who, possibly on the cusp of middle age, inveighs against matrimony
because she subconsciously seeks it. Being the great actor she is, Redgrave has
odd moments of unpredictable magic: when, as Beatrice, she reveals that at her
birth "a star danced" she gestures heavenwards as if communing with
the cosmos. But much of her performance runs against the grain of the text: it
is characteristic of the evening's misdirected oddity that when we are told how
Beatrice, "like a lapwing, runs close by the ground, to hear our
conference" she rushes across the stage bolt upright.
I am not being over-literal. It is Rylance who has chosen to
set the action in the England
of 1944 and to highlight the contrast between the predominantly
African-American visiting servicemen and a white rural population with its
village bobbies, boy scouts and Salvation Army majors. And because the action
has a local habitation, it is legitimate to ask exactly who Benedick and
Beatrice are and how they fit into the general picture.
If the production periodically lapses into coherence, it is
largely through a handful of stalwart supporting players. Danny Lee Wynter's
Don John has an obdurate villainy, Michael Elwyn hints at Leonato's Lear-like
rage at his daughter's supposed treachery, Peter Wight, doubling as Dogberry
and Friar Francis, delivers the latter's calming words with dignity. Claire van
Kampen's music also periodically lifts one's sinking spirits with its
evocations of Forties jive and bebop.
But the set – by designer Ultz – consisting largely of an
inset brown box, cramps the action physically and provides little to delight
the eye. The ultimate impression is of a weird evening in which two great
actors are left struggling to find their characters, and sometimes even their
lines, and in which the great and noble cause of age-blind casting suffers a
decisive setback.
Much Ado About Nothing, Old
Vic, London, Directed by Mark Rylance
Until 30 November, Box office: 0844 871 7628 Buy tickets
James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave as Benedick and
Beatrice in Mark Rylance’s production of Much Ado About Nothing.
Vanessa Redgrave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Redgrave
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=vanessa+redgrave&client=opera&hs=ejB&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=axE-UsSeGcuKswb70ICYCw&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=651&dpr=1
James Earl Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Jones
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=james+earl+jones&client=opera&hs=J6q&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=6hE-Usf_NYidtQbTzYDYBg&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=651&dpr=1
Mark Rylance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rylance
photos
https://www.google.hr/search?q=mark+rylance&client=opera&hs=4Pr&channel=suggest&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=sxY-UrL9BMTlswa8iYGgAQ&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=651&dpr=1