Wednesday evening, and the digits on my mobile show that it is a little before midnight. After hours of relentless rain, this is a moment of respite. The wind has dropped too, and the sea is calm tonight. Editor Todd Macdonald and I set off to walk back across the coastal fields to the Northumberland village of Craster. Behind us looms the ruin of Dunstanburgh Castle, in front is a sloping field of illuminated bell tents. In the air is the murmur of a soundscape combining the undulating sounds of composer Mel Mercier with some of the most beautiful love poetry in English – and in Welsh. Welcome to one of the eight locations of Peace Camp, an celebratory installation created by Deborah Warner in collaboration with Fiona Shaw, and realised by event producers extraordinaire Artichoke. I am wet and I am cold and I am tired but I am most definitely contented. read more »
Grrrr! I know, I know that you should never respond to criticism, but today I can’t resist a little rant. I am also by disposition a retiring individual not much given to trumpeting Illuminations’ achievements. But take a look at the following from Peter Stanford’s admiring interview with Sir Richard Eyre in today’s Daily Telegraph, ‘The BBC “wasn’t taking Shakespeare seriously”. Sir Richard has directed Henry IV part 1 and 2 for The Hollow Crown, the second of which is broadcast tonight on BBC Two. Stanford asks him this question:
Why, though, has he been so very keen for so long to get “proper” Shakespeare back on the BBC (as opposed to the corporation’s more recent standby, filmed versions of stage plays broadcast on BBC Four)?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am enraged by the idea (which goes unchallenged by Sir Richard) that The Hollow Crown is “proper” Shakespeare and that our Royal Shakespeare Company Hamlet with David Tennant, our Rupert Goold-directed Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, and our recent Julius Caesar, again with the RSC and like Hamlet directed by the company’s new Artistic Director Greg Doran, are somehow “standby” – and inferior, not to mention not “proper” – productions. read more »
To the Sage Gateshead for the last of just four performances of a new production of West Side Story. Directed and choreographed by Will Tuckett, it is a thrilling reworking of the Jerome Robbins original, appropriately respectful but also reinventing this masterpiece for the twenty-first century. (Go here for Albert Hickling’s 5-star Guardian review and here for a thoughful piece for the Year of Shakespeare blog by Monika Smialkowska.) A future life for the production is uncertain but I’ll be watching that carefully.
Meanwhile it prompted me to search out some of the best online resources about the late Jerome Robbins, whose original conception West Side Story was, and who was the choreographer and stage director for the premiere in 1957. I also want to try out a new format for recommended links, so following are five web sits and five fragments of video. The first of the latter is the compelling trailer for the movie of West Side Story (directed by Robert Wise and Robbins, 1961):
Let’s be absolutely clear: the opening film in The Hollow Crown, shown on BBC2 last Saturday, is a thrilling Richard II (on BBC iPlayer until 28 July). With Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear as, respectively, Richard and Bolingbroke, and as directed by Rupert Goold, this is a wonderfully confident and compelling adaptation distinguished by an astonishing central performance. The film looks great (director of photography Danny Cohen) and it sounds great (composer Adam Cork). That said, I want to ask a few questions of it and raise a concern or two, whilst also exploring a little further its images and ideas. read more »
I was in a very rainy Glasgow over the weekend at the International Screen Studies Conference. Back in London today, I am looking forward to a month or so when I can finally do some writing, reading and viewing. This feels like a time to catch my breath after the production of Julius Caesar and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which have meant that the last few months have been fairly hectic – and I still have lots to reflect on from both experiences (some of which I intend to post here).
There is so much to see (and to blog about), including Saturday’s Richard II (on iPlayer for a month) and then the two parts of Henry IV (above) which I’ll catch at BFI Southbank tonight. I am really keen too to return to The Space, to see (and blog about) much of what I have been missing there, and to continue working my way through the wonderful Globe to Globe recordings. I want too to get to dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and I have one or two other small adventures scheduled across the summer.
Oh yes, it’s completely thrilling to say that The Sonnets by William Shakespeare for the iPad was launched today. A collaboration with Touch Press, Faber and The Arden Shakespeare, it features a wealth of content, including performances on video of all 154 of the poems. You can download it for £9.99 from the iTunes store, and it is already attracting fantastic reviews. As the app of the day at msn’s tech & gadgets it is described as ‘a marvellous piece of work… worth every penny’. For The Telegraph, Shane Richmond awards it 5 stars and describes it as ‘a wonderful app that will provide hours of enjoyment’. Boyd Tonkin wrote in The Independent that the app is ‘a digital delight … even the mighty rhymster might have gasped in awe at the latest medium to carry his verse.’ And at the weekend, Robert Collins in the Sunday Times called it, ‘a masterly app… It’s all so intuitively easy to use and so superbly thorough that you start to feel that this is precisely what a book should be. As accessible as it is scholarly, it’s an extraordinary achievement, that brings the sonnets bracingly to life and definitively sets the bar for the future of digital reading.’ (There is so much I want to write about this – so, more later…)
After a string of posts about Julius Caesar, this one stays with Shakespeare but shifts the focus to another programme. I want to muse today about the first in the series Shakespeare Uncovered(and I would be grateful if someone can explain to me what the title means.) The idea of these six films, which are made by Blakeway Productions with 116 Films and Thirteen in association with the BBC and Shakespeare’s Globe, is that each one has a prominent thesp (although Trevor Nunn also does one) exploring one of Shakespeare’s plays. To come we have Macbeth with Ethan Hawke (did I mention it is an American co-pro – anyway that’s tonight at 21:00 on BBC Four) and David Tennant on Hamlet. And the first film, shown last week and on BBC iPlayer until 10 July has a radiant Joely Richardson looking at two plays: Twelfth Night and As You Like It.
So, friends,Julius Caesar is on BBC iPlayer. Available until 10.29pm on Sunday 1 July. Go here for my round-up of reactions, including links to reviews from the Guardian, The Independent and The Arts Desk, and here for my blog during last night’s broadcast. There is an interesting thread under the Guardian review, and I have posted a couple of the comments across the jump at the bottom. And now I have added a (lengthy) digest of the past 36 hours on Twitter. For me, one of the the most thoughtful responses so far is Peter Kirwan’s at The Bardathon blog which is really worth reading. read more »
06:20 (Monday morning): In fact, I didn’t add to the blog (see 22:23 below) after the end of the broadcast. In part this was because my two sons came back from the pub disappointed and dejected (no, they hadn’t been watching Julius Caesar) and in part because some very nice people rang and texted and mailed (with congrats). So I’ve had a night’s sleep to reflect – and I am still totally thrilled with the way the film looked and sounded and leapt off the screen. Greg and the whole cast and the art department under Michael Vale and DOP Steve Lawes and editor Trevor Waite and the sound team and everyone else who contributed have made something really pretty wonderful. A thousand thanks to one and all. read more »
As I have done previously with our productions of Hamlet (2009) and Macbeth (2010), I am using this page to draw together responses to our new film of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Julius Caesar. The film is first broadcast by BBC Four on Sunday night, 24 June, at 8pm, and we very much hope that you will see it then or during the following week on BBC iPlayer. Over the coming days I will update this post with all of the reactions I can find – and your thoughts and questions will be very welcome in the Comments below. For the latest news, follow @Illuminations on Twitter – and if you comment about the film there please use #JuliusCaesar. Across the jump you will find links to the key BBC resources, to articles, previews, reviews, blog posts and more, as well as an index of links to all the previous Illuminations posts about Julius Caesar.
