SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY: TEN BEST MALE PERFORMANCES

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare... born 453 years ago (and died 401 years ago).

Eight years ago I compiled four Top Ten lists of my favourite Shakespeare performances - lead & supporting male and lead & supporting female.

Eight years is a long time in theatre-going so to celebrate the greatest playwright ever, here is my updated list of favourite lead actors and their performances in key roles; these are the ones that all new interpretations are judged against.

BEST ACTOR (in alphabetical order):

 SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (King Lear - 2014)

  SIMON RUSSELL BEALE (Iago - 1997)

 IAN CHARLESON (Hamlet - 1989)

 RALPH FIENNES (Richard III - 2016)

 HENRY GOODMAN (Shylock - 1999)

 IAN HOLM (King Lear - 1997)

 DEREK JACOBI (King Lear - 2010)

 RORY KINNEAR (Hamlet - 2010)

 IAN McKELLEN (Richard III - 1990)

 JONATHAN PRYCE (Shylock - 2015)

150 word review: AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT by Derek Jacobi

I have finally read Derek Jacobi's autobiography which I bought in 2013 at a signing session at the National Theatre.  When we finally got to the front of the queue, he threw his head back and declaimed in his best theatrical tone: "Good evening, gentlemen!"

I wish the book was as larger-than-life but it is infuriatingly placid; it's impersonal tone might be because it's ghosted, you can almost hear the click of the tape recorder at the end of each chapter.

Born and raised in wartime Essex, cosseted by his devoted mother and father, at times you wish he was given more of a hard time by life.  Oxford led to Birmingham Rep and later Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic.

I CLAUDIUS brought stardom and there have been more theatre and television successes but nothing here gives you insight into how it feels to live it.

Dvd/150: I CLAUDIUS (Herbert Wise. 1976, tv)

40 years on, the BBC series of Robert Graves' I CLAUDIUS shines bright with it's dazzling cast and Jack Pulman's witty, concise adaptation - a textbook example in bringing a sprawling novel to life.

Filmed on BBC TV Centre sets, budgetary constraints allow Herbert Wise to concentrate on the interplay between the characters - and what characters!

Derek Jacobi is outstanding as Claudius who, in old age, writes the history of the emperors in his Imperial family from Augustus to himself, along with the formidable women they married or were murdered by!  Stuttering, lame Claudius is the family joke but survives them all to bear witness.

Of course it's the monsters one remembers: John Hurt's psychotic Caligula and the equally dangerous Livia, sublimely played by Sian Phillips in one of the great television performances.

 
Brian Blessed's avuncular Augustus, Margaret Tyzack's stoic Antonia and Sheila White's lascivious Messalina are among the other treasures.

Shelf or charity shop? You must be as mad as Caligula to think I would part with this!

Dvd/150: NATIONAL THEATRE 50 (2013)

A marvellous celebration of the National Theatre's 50th birthday, this 2-disc dvd includes the all-star gala which re-staged scenes and musical numbers from the NT's greatest shows plus the 2-part BBC Arena programme covering the National's tumultuous history, as dramatic as anything ever staged there.

Wonderful archive recordings and footage tell how Laurence Olivier launched the NT at the Old Vic and, in the second programme, how Peter Hall took over with it's move to the South Bank and how his successors Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner have sustained it.  The programme interviews these directors along with the new Artistic Director Rufus Norris.

Also interviewed are Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Tom Stoppard, Peter Brook, Ronald Pickup, Jonathan Miller, Ian McKellen, David Hare, Peter Shaffer, Judi Dench and Alan Bennett.

It's worth it for the footage of GUYS AND DOLLS alone!

Shelf or charity shop? It has a shelf all to itself.

My last theatre visit of 2010 was the much-anticipated KING LEAR at the Donmar with Derek Jacobi playing the King more sinned-against than sinning (actually that's debatable).

As I said it was much-anticipated and when the lights went down I had a real sense of "Eyes down, here we go..." However despite many excellent things going for it, I felt afterwards a slight sense of disappointment. It was the production I had expected to see: well-acted, clearly directed, well-designed and lit... but all very mannered and contained. Maybe I am just used to the Grandage Donmar house-style.

Michael Grandage has given us a no-nonsense production that does nothing to divert attention from the text - it's one of the clearest and speediest LEARs I have seen.

Christopher Oram's setting also does nothing to pull focus from the text or performers - bare boards daubed with dabs of white paint, the smell of which still tweaks the nose, and costumes of black or grey. The production is atmospherically lit by the excellent Neil Austin.

Derek Jacobi's Lear is, as expected, beautifully thought-through and he invests his speeches with shades of meaning which make you feel you are hearing them for the first time. At all times however I felt that he and Grandage were plotting a course to the last scene - even in his maddest moments, I always felt Jacobi had one foot in the floor so to speak.
I think the problem I had with the production was that it had been cast so there would be no fireworks to distract from Jacobi's blazing rocket. Not that the acting was bad, they all just seemed to build to a certain point and then stop. I remember back to Ian Holm's stunning Lear at the Cottesloe - he dazzled, but so did Michael Bryant's Fool, Barbara Flynn and Amanda Redman's Goneril and Regen, Finbar Lynch's seductively evil Edmund et al. Here, the actors seem to knowingly stop short of pulling the focus from Jacobi.

I feel a bit guilty as I write this that I seem to be putting the blast on it - I did enjoy it and am mindful of how lucky I am to get a chance to see it as I presume the run is sold out and it will be unlikely to transfer. The good news is that the production will be screened live in cinemas here and abroad as the first production outside of the National Theatre to be so filmed in the NT's LIVE project - click HERE for details.
So... good things in the production: a great pulling-the-carpet-from-under-expectations moment by having the boarded set rattle and lighting quiver between the cracks during the storm scene but stop for Jacobi to whisper his "Blow winds" speech which is all the more unsettling for being done so; Justine Mitchell's Regen who, after dropping her placid and complaisant nature when confronted by Gloucester, made one wish that she had more scenes in the latter stages of the play; Ron Cook's cautionary Fool who showed again how great the role is when entrusted to an actor worthy of it.The most sublime moments belong to Jacobi however - his turn-on-a-groat changes from sovereign security to apoplectic rage when confronted by Cordelia's refusal to put her love for him into words, his violence in cursing Goneril to childlessness, his childlike madness, his joyful hopes to Cordelia that "We two alone will sing like birds" in hoped-for captivity and of course, his playing of the final heartbreaking scene.

All in all, a very suitable way to end a year of theatregoing.