Subscribe To This Site

Daren in Brief - SHAKESPEARE ON TV
by Daren Foster

Shakespeare on TV

BEST CANADIAN MOVIES PODCAST

WATCH FILMS
2008 Shorts
2007 Shorts
Drama Shorts
Comedy Shorts
Horror Shorts
Animation Shorts
Action Shorts
Thriller Shorts
DOC Shorts
Experimental
Musical Videos
1 Minute Movies

Daren in Brief
Shakespeare on TV

by Daren Foster

After slogging through Ian McKellen’s King Lear, my mind is cast back to 1983 and another TV production of King Lear starring Laurence Olivier. It is a play and role that seems to make great big juicy smoked Virginia hams out of even the finest of actors. While Olivier certainly had a flair for scene-chewery especially in his dotage (witness his performance as Neil Diamond’s dad in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer: The bullets! The bombs! The terrorists!!), Sir Ian has always seemed a more restrained, cerebral kind of performer. Even as Gandalf in the interminable Lord of the Rings trilogy, he managed to avoid obvious and easy histrionic excesses.

Yet, there he was as Lear, a-wailing and a-over-emoting to beat the band like he was playing to the upper back balcony at the Wintergarden. I actually found myself at one point grinding my teeth in pained disbelief at the spectacle. Probably I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the excess since it was a TV adaptation of the play McKellen first performed on stage at the RSC in 2007 and subsequently took on a world tour. If nothing else, the production was all so very theatrical.

Maybe TV is not the best place for Shakespeare. It’s too intimate a medium to withstand the Bard’s grandness, suited as it is for the theatre, an open-air theatre in fact where the sky is literally the limit. Film can sometimes deal effectively with Shakespeare. The canvas is big enough, so to speak. McKellen’s 1995 version of Richard III would be a good case in point.

The thing is, McKellen did successfully bring Shakespeare to TV once upon a time with 1979’s Macbeth, a notorious quagmire for any actor in the lead role on stage or screen. This one’s a little slice of perfection, all pared down to a stage and single spotlight. That makes this King Lear seem just cheesy and amateurish in comparison.

In an interview last week, I guess to plug the play’s broadcast, McKellen said the role of Lear almost killed him. I hear you, Sir Ian. I hear you. Watching did me some grievous harm too.