The Merry Wives of Windsor (Series 5 Episode 2)

First Transmitted 28th December 1982

Richard Griffiths tries his moves. Too bad they all know he's an idiot.

Cast: Richard Griffiths (Sir John Falstaff), Judy Davis (Mistress Ford), Ben Kingsley (Ford), Prunella Scales (Mistress Page), Elizabeth Spriggs (Mistress Quickly), Michael Bryant (Dr. Caius), Alan Bennett (Justice Shallow), Tenniel Evans (Sir Hugh Evans), Simon Chandler (Fenton), Richard O’Callaghan (Slender), Bryan Marshall (Page), Nigel Terry (Pistol), Michael Graham Cox (Host), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), Michael Robbins (Nym), Ron Cook (Simple)

Director: David Jones

Oh dear. If ever there was a production to be shown to people to convince them that, y’know, this series is not for them it would be this one. As so often in this series, when the comedy comes calling, the series is reduced to looking dull, stretched and old fashioned, here with gurning actors and much forced jollity pulling us towards a seemingly long distant conclusion. I’ve tackled the problems of bringing Shakespeare comedy from stage to screen earlier when discussing Twelfth Night.  Here all the problems of this genre on screen come together with a brutal force.

First and foremost this is a painfully long production of what is a very slight and let’s be honest, a rather tedious play. Did something as slight as Merry Wives deserve an almost three hour run time? Can a production in which nearly all the actors seem to be keen to stress how stupid their characters are, hold our attention for so long? What we get here is something so old fashioned it could have been around since the 19^th century, and so dull that you’ll actually want to stop it and paint your walls so that you have something more entertaining to watch afterwards.

Of course a lot of the problems here lie with the play itself. Legend has it that Elizabeth I herself requested a play to see “Sir John” in love. If true, then this must be one of the first surviving examples of a play written for commission rather than the author himself actually wanting to write it. Crammed with feeble jokes, lame set pieces and obvious humour, Merry Wives doesn’t even feel like a “Falstaff” play – certainly not the Falstaff seen in Henry IV. As Harold Bloom put it, it’s almost like Shakespeare was ashamed of what he was doing and wanted to keep his creation away from this train wreck.

However, with the BBC committed to giving us the full text, there is no tightening of the production, no cutting of unnecessary fat from the bones, no trimming for pace to keep the slight plot moving forward. Instead scenes stretch on almost to the crack of doom. There is some mild rearrangement of the text, but the listlessness of the construction of the production and the strange lack of urgency throughout the film (despite so much furious mugging, it never feels like there is any rush to get anywhere) mean it just doesn’t grip the audience at all. I caved on this one. Sorry – I want to watch them all the way through, really I do. But man oh man this was so flipping, head bashingly dull and turgidly unfunny I had to watch some in fast forward. I cycled to work the other day and my bicycle fell apart, including the wheel falling off. Cost a fortune to fix and I walked to work. That was four times funnier than this crap.

Part of the problem of this listlessness can be found in the central performance of Richard Griffiths. His Falstaff is a childish idiot. No other way of really putting it. Of course it’s part of the play’s problem that Falstaff is a terminally stupid character who seems to believe virtually everything he is told, no matter how outlandish. What Griffiths is not is witty or charismatic or – strangely – energised. At key moments it feels like his performance is going to let rip into posturing, boasting, rage or frustration: but it never does. He always returns to a level, cool delivery of the lines, a low-key, gentle rendition of the knight as almost a worldly innocent. It’s a legitimate interpretation, but for a play that borders on a farce, having a central character who seems so slow and underpowered makes Falstaff quite a tedious figure, who seems to diminish in importance in the play. Griffiths as a performer seems more like a natural Bottom (and lord knows he would have done better than Brian Glover in the role) or a Sir Andrew Aguecheek  - a dreamer rather than the scheming rogue Falstaff tries to be in this play.

But then perhaps Griffiths brings it down because Ben Kingsley is determined to leave nothing in the changing room as Ford. Kingsley was a highly praised Ford on stage a few years before this was filmed with the RSC. Now, coming to the production a few months before he was to hoist aloft an Oscar for Gandhi, he clearly decided to repeat the performance, with no alteration, for the camera – letting rip as if the back of the stalls still needed to be reached. On stage I can imagine it was gripping, but on camera it’s simply overwhelming as every oversized gesture and vocal tic is practically forced down the eyeball of the viewer. In fact, the impression that is created is that Kingsley is keen to let us the viewer know that he far smarter than his stupid character – as if Ford was someone he was holding at arm’s length like an exhibit, rather than as a living, breathing person.

This is pretty much the case for every other male performance in the play: aim big, aim high, aim dumb. Let’s laugh at each character in turn, as if this was a Shakespearean Hi-de-Hi. When even seasoned actors like Michael Bryant get in on the act then you know you are in trouble. Alan Bennett can count his lucky stars that a bizarre wig and beard render him almost completely unrecognisable (bar the famous voice) as Shallow (in fact it feels like he just wants to get the whole thing over and done with). Can you even begin to relate to any of these idiots? With no straight man or sense of reality hanging over anything, how can you care about what happens? Where is the intelligence of a Feste or the depth of a Benedick?

So the people who come out of this well are the women. Prunella Scales and Judy Davis make a good fist of the scheming wives, revelling in their deceptions. Davis in particular has a minxy glee that is very alluring and what energy this production has is almost completely down to her. The stand out performance though is Elizabeth Spriggs – mainly because she is practically the only performer in the play that seems to want to treat her character with some measure of respect, and who seems to suggest some intelligence exists in her. Her selfishness and sharpness as she cons virtually every other character in the play, makes her actually interesting and one of the few performers the audience can root for.

This parade of grotesques are  led through their paces in a series of duff comedic set pieces, nearly all of which go on far too long to be either impressive, amusing or really watchable. David Jones seems to have little natural flair for comedy, confusing loud for funny and dumb for charming. Where he does seem comfortable is throwing money up onto the screen with an impressive interior set and location that recreates the look and feel of Shakespeare’s Stratford, each house taking on an elaborate interior that reflects different elements of Shakespeare’s birthplace. The exterior locations – big fields and village squares – are much less convincing, but that’s about par for the course for the series. So it is impressive to look at, and the camerawork to explore this set is well done.

But the actual scenes themselves aren’t. Throw on top of that a terribly slow and mis-shaped staging of the final deception scene. Why in the name of all that is holy the costume designer decided to go for a Ku Klux Klan look for the child fairies is a complete mystery. In fact, the final sequence plays like a rather sinister build-up to a lynching, as if Wicker Man style, these villagers were preparing to sacrifice the poor fat knight in some pagan rite rather than have a bit of fun at his expense. Needless to say, the scene is about as funny and engaging as getting your hand slammed in a door.

So there you go. A director with little eye for comedy lets a lot of actors rip with barely any control with a script that is not very good in a production that reverentially stretches out over nearly three hours. The one or two moments that are amusing are totally lost within this morass of tedium. Why this really doesn’t work in the end is that there is no warmth here, no sense of affection for the characters. They are merely jokes and punchlines, not human beings. There is no sense of respect for them in the actors or the directors. Baldrick may be an idiot, but Tony Robinson has both respect and affection for him in his performance: the actors here just think these characters are almost beneath their interest.

And I don’t just blame David Jones and the cast. I put one of the largest fingers at you Shakespeare. This is crappy hackwork at best, as if Salman Rushdie tried to write a farce, but still wanted to us to know he was the smartest man in the room, rather than caring whether we enjoyed it or not. So welcome then to one of the worst films in the series, married to one of the worst scripts Shakespeare ever wrote. Poor, poor, poor stuff.

Conclusion

Another total duffer of a comedy though you can’t polish a turd if you are going to treat it as if it has literally dropped on your head from heaven. Elizabeth Spriggs alone probably emerges with reputation fully intact. Everyone else just looks happy to have got out of a contractual obligation – kinda like the Bard himself. Not good.

NEXT TIME: Back on the history treadmill with the first part of the Henry VI trilogy.

Julius Caesar (Series 1 Episode 4)

Julius Caesar

First transmitted 11th February 1979

 

Richard Pasco, Keith Michell and Charles Gray take us to Ancient Rome for paranoia and murder

 

Cast: Richard Pasco (Brutus), Keith Michell (Mark Antony), Charles Gray (Julius Caesar), David Collings (Cassius), Virginia McKenna (Portia), Elizabeth Spriggs (Calphurnia), Garrick Hagon (Octavius Caesar), William Simons (Trebonius), Sam Dastor (Casca), Alexander Davion (Decius Brutus), Brian Coburn (Messala), Darien Angadi (Cinna), Andrew Hilton (Lucilius)

Director: Herbert Wise

 

I have always had a soft spot for Julius Caesar. I have also always loved the classic BBC Roman drama series I, Claudius. So I should say that from the start I was pre-disposed to like an ancient Roman set Shakespeare drama, directed by the man who made I, Claudius. But, even despite this, I’ve got to say this is an intelligent, well acted adaptation of the play, inventively directed and full of a host of good ideas.

 

Returning to the studio set from the total failure of location shooting is a massive boon here. Tony Abbot’s complex Roman forum set feels suitably lived in. Yes if you want you can pick fault with an (obviously) fake blue sky that is artfully concealed in the background of several shots (and a matte painting hill), but remember the constraints of the time. And I would take imaginative direction and good acting over an expensive location shoot ham-fistedly managed any day.

 

Herbert Wise effectively creates a sense of scale here with a series of effective crane shots. Right from the start, the camera looms down and into an empty street, while we hear the chants of “Caesar, Caesar” off screen from the Roman crowds. It straight away creates an atmosphere, before the screen is populated with a vibrant crowd scene. These shots are repeated at key moments throughout, always acting to stress the grandeur of events, most notably in the meeting of the generals before the final battle.

 

In fact the camera work throughout is actually rather sophisticated. Long takes never appear static as a roving camera is used throughout, moving in and around the characters, prowling behind the actors, making the viewing experience the most immersive I’ve seen so far in this series. Wise’s camera makes the viewer as much a conspirator as the senators, joining them in close conversations and twitchily moving with them, as if under a paranoid scrutiny. Crowd scenes are shot throughout with an intelligence and dynamism that suggest a far larger company – Antony’s speech uses the crowd particularly well. A neat trick is carried out by having the crowds rush to get their revenge for Caesar’s reveal leaving behind (in a reveal to the audience) the soothsayer staring at Caesar’s corpse (take a look at the image below to see what I mean). Put your prejudices aside – this is seriously well-made stuff (for the time). Imagine what could have been done with the budget of The Hollow Crown here. And god almighty it is such a relief to find something so well made after the disaster of As You Like It.

 

Where Wise really scores in is that his directorial invention is not just restricted to the technical. Genuine thought about interpretation and the text seems to have gone into this, in ways which haven’t really been as apparent in any of the other productions I’ve seen so far. To Wise this is a paranoid, claustrophobic, political thriller with a real psychological edge and every directorial flourish is built around creating this interpretation of the play. This is most apparent in the decision to have the monologues delivered primarily as voiceovers, with a roving camera studying the actors intently thinking their way through the line and thought processes. However, at crucial points the characters blurt out loud key lines and phrases, as if the thoughts were too strong for them to keep inside. For instance in A1 S4, Brutus’ speech is all voiceover, other than the key phase “then lest he may prevent”. In A3 S1 Antony’s self accusation over Caesar’s body is all voiceover bar “Butchers!” and from “Cry havoc” onwards. It sounds corny when written down, but it not only shows the intelligence of the characters, it also gives a key psychological impact to them – it’s the best expression yet I’ve seen of thinking in this series, and the only real attempt so far to show soliloquies in a cinematic manner.

 

The characterisation of the conspirators also stresses their ‘public schoolboy’ nature. I really noticed the number of times Brutus refers to his school here – at least four characters are old school chums. Brutus himself is a patrician Eton head-boy, totally at ease with his status and expecting respect and deference from those around him, with Cassius almost like an over-eager Eton-fag, yearning for approval. Everything about the manner of the conspirators seems to suggest the simple assurance of men trained to positions, treating the plebians as people who don’t know what’s best for them. It’s clear from the start they never think through any of the things they must do to conduct a successful conspiracy, expecting all to fall into place. These people just don’t understand in any way ’politics’ in the way that Caesar and Antony do.

 

Richard Pasco’s performance really seizes this interpretation of the conspirators with a vengeance. His Brutus is a hard man to like, impassive, arrogant and imposing but crucially not charismatic. He is a man devoid of any doubt once he has made a decision, he seizes the position of authority in any group as a divine right – the slightest questioning of him in A4 S2 by Cassius sees him first treat him like a dismissive older brother and then flip a table over in fury. There is a strange, unsettling calm about him and a sense of a man unable to truly understand the situation he is in. He sees himself as a master of events but is constantly buffeted by them. His appeal to the people is like a top scholar’s detailed homework and betrays his lack of appeal to those beyond his immediate contact. It’s a really interesting insight into a man who doesn’t seem to appreciate and understand anything – an arrogant man reduced in the end to literally crawling through the dirt asking someone to kill him. He is exactly the sort of man these posh schoolboys would think should appeal to the people. Richard Pasco is a little forgotten today, but you can see why he was such a leading classical actor at the height of his career.

 

It’s fair to say that the other performances don’t quite come up to his level. Keith Michell feels a little too old for Antony, and slightly overplays his wilder emotions, particularly in A3 S2. But he handles the big speech very well, subtly demonstrating Antony’s feel for politics. Small moments show him measuring the reaction of the audience and steeling himself to make the correct intervention at the crucial moment. David Collings’ Cassius veers a little too close to camp at key moments, particularly in the play’s opening. What he does do well is demonstrate how unequal the friendship with Brutus is, that Brutus is far more important to Cassius than vice versa. But although he delivers a good sense of Cassius’ willing submission to Brutus he doesn’t manage to make the part as moving as the interpretation suggests it could be.

 

A great success in Richard II, Charles Gray here is too weak a figure as Caesar. His features and manner suggest a stressed Baron von Greenback, and there are too many moments of weakness thrown in by Gray and Wise – this Caesar has a suggestion of an epileptic fit on his first appearance, trips down the stairs in the background at one point and has a constant sheen of sweat on his face. With Calphurnia he appears more as a petulant schoolboy – it all serves to undermine the character a little too much. Strangely, his strongest moment is his ghostly appearance late in the play. For the other performances, Elizabeth Spriggs goes well against type as a matronly, feminine Calphurnia and outshines Virginia McKenna’s high profile but less interesting Portia. Amongst a host of alumni from I, Claudius, Sam Dastor makes an urbane Casca.

 

Whatever small flaws there are in performances here though, each actor really handles the close-ups very well. The pressure-cooker events are nicely conveyed by the sweat that seems to be permanently placed on each forehead, as the camera drills in – at one point right into Cassius’ eyes. Acting without speaking is also spot-on here – unlike some other moments in these productions, the actors are clearly measuring and weighing everything being said to them. It’s striking in A1 S2 how little Brutus speaks, but yet how Pasco is always the focus of the scene and that the viewer learns more about him than Cassius. In A4 S1 the tension of the triumvirate is elegantly shown through a series of tight close ups on frowning, tense faces. Before the final battle, the camera roams around Brutus’ camp, lingering on the faces of the soldiers and observing a desolate Cassius who can hardly look at Brutus as he says farewell. The focus is on character not action – even the death of Caesar happens in the back of the shot, with Brutus’ guilty face as the audiences’ primary focus.

 

It’s probably clear by now that I enjoyed this production a fair bit. I feel there is more that I could mention and as I scan through the five pages of notes I made on this production (the most so far!) I feel sure I missed some things out. Now I will agree that not everything here is perfect – if you are not immersed in the budgeted production standards of the time you will see the obvious sets and dated costumes you expect to see. And yes, the final frenzied stabbing of Caesar partly happens off camera as the actors (clearly!) are not actually driving their swords into his body. But, honestly, look past some of the cheapness and there is some really compelling stuff here. It’s TV with intelligence but not flashy self-consciousness, and there should always be a place for that and I think reflects something we’ve lost in this Golden Age of high production values, brilliantly smart television – that love of something put together on the cheap but with real imagination, creativity and love. So god love you Herbert Wise, Richard Pasco and company – you should be proud of this.

 

 

Conclusion

Some truly intelligent direction delivers, for the first time, an actual interpretation rather than a straight telling of the play. A terrific performance by Richard Pasco anchors a production where everyone has their moment to shine. Stuffed with ideas and creativity, and also with a coherent visual sense and an ability to offer more than the ‘expected’ shots, this is the best film in the series so far.

 

NEXT TIME: Tim Piggot-Smith blackmails Kate Nelligan to surrender her virginity in Measure for Measure.