You’ll need a spare three hours and a love of Shakespeare
but the sprawling documentary Shakespeare Lives! will more than repay you. The
Royal Shakespeare Company turned on a huge evening of tribute to celebrate Shakespeare
on the 400th anniversary of his death and the resulting film is
enormous and absorbing fun-with-the-Bard, when it isn’t chilling to the bone
with bits of the Scottish play and dark musings on life and existence.
It’s hosted in a brilliant bit of cross cultural marketing by
Catherine Tate and David Tennant, who not only formed one of the liveliest
Doctor/companion partnerships in recent Dr Who but also played Beatrice and
Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing on stage. Tennant’s Hamlet and Richard 11
are not to be sneezed at either and glimpses of his Shakespearean quality shine
through.
Then it’s a procession of the great and the good done by the
bloody marvellous. Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado, Anthony and Cleopatra, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Henry IV
and V, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet…. Judy Dench, Harriet Walters, Ian
McKellan, Helen Mirren, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Sher…
There are tiny film segments on the Stratford places in
Shakespeare’s life, Tim Minchin and the heir to the throne pop in as part of an
argument on how to say “to be or not to be’ and even Horrible Histories turns
up. There’s cross cultural Shakespeare from Japan and from Africa and a mass of
colour blind casting. And Helen Mirren turns up toward the end as Prospero.
Surprises abound, but look out particularly for Ian McKellan
doing a piece from Sir Thomas More, a play from somewhere around 1596-1601 that
seems to have had several hands contributing, including Shakespeare. The play
ran into censorship difficulties and probably never reached performance but the
words of More on the subject of unwelcome asylum seekers from Lombardy coming
to London are chillingly modern.
And every now and again there’s dance or a piece of jazz or
an opera or a musical comedy or a pure musical spin off. They might leave out
William Walton and Benjamin Britten but not Verdi and Prokofiev’s Romeo and
Juliet or Brush Up Your Shakespeare. And Mendelssohn and Oberon (David Suchet),
Titania (Judi Dench) and Puck (David Tennant) have the last word.
If it ever gets released on a DVD it’ll be a godsend in the
classroom, but it will also be treasured by fans of the playwright. Let’s not
spoil all of the surprises by saying more.
Alanna Maclean
Dendy May 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11.
Session dates and times:
Palace Electric May 6-8; 14-15.
Session dates and times:
On the play Sir Thomas More: