Thursday, January 30, 2014

Kenneth and Alex.

From the BBC's press office:
"Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston to star in new BBC Radio 3 drama of Antony And Cleopatra for Shakespeare’s Birthday: Sunday 20 April

"Actors Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston will be cast as Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in a special production directed by BBC Radio drama’s Alison Hindell for BBC Radio 3 to mark the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.

"Commenting on the announcement, Kenneth Branagh said: "I'm so happy to be teamed again with Alison Hindell, whose brilliant production of Life And Fate was one of the great pleasures of my work in radio. I'm also excited to be reunited with Alex Kingston after our hugely rewarding partnership in Macbeth on stage. To play another pair of Shakespeare's great couples, and for a personally beloved medium, is a privilege."

Friday, January 24, 2014

"Hamlet is, of course, the Genesis of the Daleks of Shakespeare."

Philip Sandifer is writing about the history of Doctor Who within a historical and somewhat literary criticism context which sometimes includes material which is influenced or tangentially connected to the television science fiction franchise. This week he's covered David Tennant in Hamlet at the RSC in 2008:
"Hamlet is, of course, the Genesis of the Daleks of Shakespeare - the one that is so canonically the best as to render further discussion oddly superfluous. Like Genesis of the Daleks, it has more than enough oomph to live up to its billing, and yet its status seems oddly out of proportion. Sure, it’s very good, but it’s tough to argue that it’s head and shoulders above King Lear or Othello. But Hamlet is nevertheless the prestige piece - the big one, if you will. Tennant, for his part, is very good at the role. The same skill that makes him a good Doctor - his ability to insert an unusually high volume of decisions into his reading of a given scene - helps him just as well in Shakespeare. He can deliver Shakespearean dialogue at speed in a way that makes the content of the lines clear. This is no mean feat - Shakespeare is brilliant, but the fact that the language is not normal conversational English makes it difficult to pick up on things at conversational speed. Being able to add, in effect, a second channel of communication through gesture and tone of voice helps in a big way. And it’s not particularly distinct from how Tennant is capable of having dialogue about, say, Z-neutrino energy and using it to deliver actual information instead of the patent nonsense that it actually is."
As I said in my original review, what's interesting about Tennant plays the role is that when he's feigning madness he seems to very consciously go full Time Lord, all of the Tenth Doctor's various ticks in full effect which makes the contrast with the darker, more internalised prince all the starker.