Twelfth Night (Series 2 Episode 4)

First transmitted 6th January 1980

Alec McCowen is fooled and bamboozled by some comic pranksters

Cast: Felicity Kendal (Viola), Alec McCowen (Malvolio), Robert Hardy (Sir Toby Belch), Sinead Cusack (Olivia), Annette Crosbie (Maria), Trevor Peacock (Feste), Clive Arrindell (Orsino), Ronnie Stevens (Sir Andrew Aguecheek), Robert Lindsay (Fabian), Maurice Roeves (Antonio), Michael Thomas (Sebastian), Malcolm Reynolds (Valentine), Ryan Michael (Curio), Ric Morgan (Captain), Arthur Hewlett (Priest)

Director: John Gorrie

 

After what seems like a long journey through British history in the last few plays of the series, it was a bit of a relief to finally get a bit of a respite with another genre of Shakespeare: a comedy. Now the last comedy I watched in this series was As You Like It, which, loyal followers of this blog will know, was surely one of the worst things committed to film by the BBC. Twelfth Night is undoubtedly far superior to that (hurrah!). But it falls into the difficulties that the vast majority of Shakespeare comedies I have seen on film fall into. It is simply not that funny.

 

Shakespearean comedy is highly theatrical in its nature. It’s built around having that immediate connection with the audience. The jokes feed off the actors being there in the room with you, from having that shared experience of other people laughing alongside you to be truly successful. It’s not just Shakespeare of course – how many modern stage comedies have been translated to screen only to be met with stony silence from audiences? The films of Noises Off and A Chorus of Disapproval spring straight to mind as examples. (There were films of those you say? Yes there were and thanks for proving my point.)

 

This is why so many television comedies (from sitcoms to panel shows) have laughter tracks or are recorded before a live studio audience. People are more comfortable letting go and laughing if they feel it is part of a communal experience. Performers in turn feed off that energy, taker greater risks, become less self-conscious and (hopefully) more funny. Try and imagine creating that atmosphere in your performance on a cold Tuesday evening in a TV studio surrounded by technicians and clock-watching union officials (as these films would have been). Hardly conducive to side-splitting entertainment is it?

 

Well anyway, that’s a general point that probably applies to every comedy I’m going to watch in this series. Shakespeare drama translates better to film: it’s more intense, more, for want of a better word, dramatic. That shouldn’t detract from the fine, clever little drama John Gorrie has created here in his inaugural effort for the series. This Twelfth Night is set in an autumnal 17^th-century setting, with echoes of the English Civil War in both dress and styling and in the portrayal of Malvolio’s puritanism. The house is a triumph of production design, with Gorrie’s intention of creating a clear ‘geography’ to the house and its rooms very successful. There are splashes of inspiration from Rembrandt in the lighting and design in places. Even the house exteriors look convincing (which is more than can be said for the painfully artificial beach in A1 S2). It all serves to place McCowen’s firm and softly-spoken Malvolio as prototype parliamentian, while Orsino contrasts as a clichéd layabout royalist (and a nod of the hat to Gorrie for sneaking the setting beyond the ‘Messina rules’ of nothing past the 1610s).

 

The sexuality of the play also gets some interesting exploration here. Most clearly, Antonio’s homosexuality is played very openly and clearly (and with a great deal of emotion in Maurice Roeve’s sensitive performance, a real highlight) with it gently accepted by Sebastian, although there is no hint of reciprocation. But Gorrie also allows a suggestion of underlying attraction for Olivia from Viola (her breathless reaction when Olivia reveals her face of “most fine”), which puts in context slightly her gentle reaction to her throughout the play. Similarly in A2 S4 Orsino displays an almost flirty sensuality towards Viola/Cesario, which again allows his fury towards her when he assumes she has betrayed him in A5 S1 to have a greater edge to it.

 

Sex is clearly very prominent in the house. Belch and Maria are all over each other like a pair of horny teenagers. Olivia’s increasingly colourful and shapely dresses from scene to scene demonstrate clearly her growing fascination with Cesario. Sebastian can’t believe his luck when he arrives – and is quite happy to enjoy Olivia’s attentions once they are thrust upon him (so to speak). Even Malvolio is reduced to a giggly, bouncing mess from sexual excitement at the thought of claiming Olivia for his own (and when he encounters her in A3 S4 she clearly recognises exactly what he is feeling and is slightly panicked at it). It’s a very nice undertone to the production.

 

 

Perhaps part of this strange sexual buzz is related to the fact that Kendal’s Cesario looks literally nothing like a man. I’ve genuinely never seen a less convincing drag-act since Lt. George in Blackadder. Still clearly wearing eye-shadow and make-up and with flowing feminine hair, surely no-one in their right mind could ever believe her to be a man, for all the masculine posing she takes on. I can’t decide if this is a big problem or not. It probably wouldn’t be in the theatre with the suspension of disbelief but it works slightly less here. Attempts to give Sebastian a bouffant haircut, don’t change the fact that they don’t really look like each other that much. It’s a problem that Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night film tackled much more effectively. That issue aside, Kendal’s performance is fine-spoken with a dollop of humanity and tenderness (both for Olivia and for Orsino) as well as sympathy. But it’s a slightly flat performance. I think what it doesn’t really sell is either a real intelligence or any particular enjoyment in disguise. It’s just a little low on joy.

 

So what we get instead is the first Twelfth Night I’ve seen where Olivia emerges as a warmer and more engaging character than Viola. Sinead Cusack gives a terrific performance as a kindly lady of the manor, her generous nature quickly established by having Feste (a nice turn by a jovial and wiser-than-he-seems Trevor Peacock) cuddling up to her like a child in her first scene. In her wooing of Cesario she seems shy and bashful and so earnest and gentle in her seduction that Viola finds it impossible to feel anything but sympathy with her. There is a lovely shot at the end of A2 S2 of her staring, heartbroken and lonely, out of the window as Cesario leaves. Her pity for Malvolio in A5 S1 is clearly the only thing that can even slightly soothe him. And it’s no wonder that she has no interest in Clive Arrindell’s uncharismatic and tedious Orsino.

 

The comedy characters suffer from the issues I talked about above. Despite this, there is some good work here. Robert Hardy plays Sir Toby as a faded army colonel, gone to seed, overweight and over the hill but clearly still smart and with a degree of physical courage (he proves himself a good, if rusty, fighter). He is less a drunk than a roisterer, a bored retiree who treats those around him as potential sources of amusement, a role that Ronnie Stevens’ meek and simpering Aguecheek (a man so tame he can only swear in inaudible mumbles, embarrassed that someone might hear him). His joie-de-vivre sexuality with Annette Crosbie’s Maria is a nice touch that adds some depth to the character. Belch is always a low-rent Falstaff, but it’s great to see an interpretation here that gives him a bit of dignity, rather than just being the first among idiots.

 

The casting of Robert Lindsay (at the time known only as a sitcom actor) is also a fantastic addition. A much better actor than the casting gives him credit for, he makes Fabian an actual character: a smart man scornful of his betters, but fundamentally a coward and a lackey. He also has a lot of energy he brings to scenes, certainly more than a couple of the other performers which really makes him stand out. Like Alun Armstrong in Measure for Measure, it’s easy to see why he went on to have such a strong dramatic career.

 

The balance between comedy and drama in the production, though, is off. All the best (and memorable) moments in the play are the serious ones not the funny ones. Alec McCowen’s Malvolio has moments, but it’s a performance that seems more comfortable in the cold officiousness of A2 S3 or the desperate tragedy of A4 S2 than the wooing of A3 S4. The flurry of challenges in A4 have their moments (and there is a nice underplayed double-take from Hardy in A5 S1) but they don’t have enough energy to them. Michael Thomas’ Sebastian is too much of a cold figure to provide the bemusement and outrage the scenes need. Even the famous yellow stockings are only sighted briefly on screen. Compared with the more ‘dramatic’ elements around the relationships of the characters, it never quite takes flight. And that is perhaps, in the end, a terminal problem for a play that is probably one of Shakespeare’s funniest stage comedies. You want to be much more amused by it than you are ever going to be.

 

Conclusion

The comedy isn’t there but when the focus is on the dramatic it works rather well and there are some good performances, in particular Cusack, Hardy and Lindsay, that reinterpret their characters in subtle ways. The setting of the play works well to bring out some of the play’s themes. More laughs would be better, but it’s a massive step-up from As You Like It and has a little more interpretative flair to it than other productions.

 

NEXT TIME: Michael Hordern is betrayed and abandoned but plots his magical revenge in The Tempest.



Henry V (Series 2 Episode 3)

First Transmitted 23rd December 1979

David Gwillim prepares to summon up the blood

Cast: David Gwillim (Henry V), Alec McCowen (Chorus), Clifford Parish (Exeter), Bryan Pringle (Pistol), Tim Wylton (Fluellen), David Buck (Westmoreland), Thorley Walters (King of France), Keith Drinkel (Dauphin), Julian Glover (Constable of France), Trevor Baxter (Canterbury), Jocelyne Boisseau (Katherine), Brian Poyser (Gower), George Hower (Sir Thomas Erpingham), David Pinner (Williams), Brenda Bruce (Mistress Quickly), Jeffrey Holland (Nym), Gordon Gostelow (Bardolph), John Abineri (Ely), Garrick Hagon (Mountjoy), Robert Harris (Burgundy), John Saunders (Orleans). John Bryans (Bourbon), Pamela Ruddock (Queen Isabel), Anna Quayle (Alice), Rob Edwards (Bedford), Martin Smith (Gloucester), Roger Davenport (Clarence), Rob Beacham (Warwick)

Director: David Giles

 

Very few Shakespeare plays have such a filmic legacy as Henry V. The two most famous cinematic interpreters of the Bard – Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh – have both acted and directed in productions of the play and it is the Shakespeare role arguably most readily associated with them. Each of the films is strikingly different, but both are imaginative productions of the play and stand up to repeated viewings as well as being excellent films in their own right. The question for any other filmed production of the play is quite simple: is there any point watching this again when you could be watching one of those productions? In the case of this film, the answer is a definite no.

 

To be fair, at the time of the making of this production, Branagh’s film was still 10 years away. Never the less, this is so old fashioned in its filming, acting and use of music (and in some scenes it is so ham-fistedly made) it may as well be 20 years when comparing the two to each other. What is a fair comparison is contrasting it with Olivier’s marvellous spectacle of high budget and imagination. And it doesn’t stand up to that either. In fact I think this production verges on the tragic, it’s such a missed opportunity.

 

For the very first time ever in this series the director goes for a non-realistic approach but, for whatever reason, it doesn’t quite work. The most effective sequence is the opening. Alec McCowen’s well-spoken chorus emerges from a blackened studio facing the camera, before lights come up in the studio to reveal an artificial court scene (a suggestion of walls) and a series of actors in freeze. Ely and Canterbury complete their plotting in a small church, and turn smoothly to walk straight into the royal throne room, created by a change of lighting in the set and the sudden reveal of other actors. It’s a high point in the production’s non-realist approach. The video below shows this sequence.

 

 

 

 

The problem is that this is a half-hearted attempt. I wanted this to stay on an obvious soundstage, with locations merging into each other and to make no attempt to persuade us we were outside. But events become a little too real. As soon as we are in France, the grass on the floor, the solid blue backdrop and the stone walls look too much like attempts to create the same realist feel as the Henry IV films. Harfleur feels like a set we are not meant to think is a set rather than a creative use of soundstage limitations.  Not only that, but the excellent movement of the Chorus between scenes is gradually dropped. McCowen may appear suddenly as a French lord at the end of A3 before walking into darkness, but by A5 it’s just become a simple cut away to his face.  It’s hugely disappointing after the quiet inventiveness of the start. Instead, by going with a more realist approach for most of A3 and A4, memories of the invention of Olivier’s film (moving from the Globe to a location and back again) come straight back to the viewer. And it’s not a flattering comparison. It makes this production look like a pale copy – as one reviewer said “the borrowed robes of Olivier”. Rather than use the budget and location limitations as a strength, they become a crippling weakness.

 

The invention returns slightly in A5 with the French court created by suggested walls and free-standing tapestries on a soundstage. The French courtroom looks great as a fleur de lis decorated room (floor and all) but it’s also got a clear outline and structure, more so than the earlier English court. The final sequence reverses the opening (the chorus walks from the still action into darkness) but it feels like something went wrong here with the plans of the director and designer (reportedly it ended up looking far more realist than either had intended). It’s a massive disappointment.

 

And Henry V is a play that needs invention: because it is so Henry-dominated, it takes a lot of work (and a very strong cast) to make any of the rest of the parts make an impact. That’s reflected in what happens here. No other actor other than David Gwillim really registers with the viewer – certainly none of the other English lords (for instance Rob Edwards, very good in Part 2, completely passed me by as a presence) who are barely characters. Clifford Parish makes a solid impression as Exeter, but David Buck continues to default to shouting as Westmoreland. For the rest, they are just interchangeable county names.

 

None of the French lords stand out either, despite actors as strong as Julian Glover, Thorley Walters, Garrick Hagon and Keith Drinkel filling the parts. Tim Wylton’s Fluellen raises the odd smile, but is far too broad for my liking. Despite Bryan Pringle’s best over acting, Pistol feels like a faded photocopy of Falstaff. Only very small moments from the support cast make impressions: Brenda Bruce gives a wonderful, emotional delivery of her eulogy to Falstaff and her sad “adieu” straight to camera is one of the few moving moments. Keith Drinkel’s terrified Dauphin during Agincourt is also a nice touch I haven’t seen before. Gordon Gostelow gives his finest performance in the series as a sweet Bardolph. But that’s really about it.

 

The lead performance though does merit some praise. Way back when watching Part 1 I thought Gwillim was doing something very different with Henry – making him a lighter, less charismatic figure, perhaps even more of a natural follower than a leader. It’s an interpretation that has carried through to here. This is easily the most softly spoken Henry V you are ever going to see. Gwillim’s Henry listens carefully to all advice when considering the invasion of France. He moves lightly and calmly with a smile through his troops, projecting calm and ease – as if there was nothing of any concern about to happen. He carefully uses emotion to win people to him – tears are in his eyes on “shall be my brother” in A4 S3 – and he is relaxed enough to encourage men to laugh at the gates of Harfleur. He only rarely shows anger (such as at Montjoy and at Williams) and is self controlled enough to play a Falstaffian game of pretence with the traitors in A2 S2.

 

The impression you get is a man who did not necessarily want to be king, who had to learn what it means to take on responsibility and duty. He had to try to wear it lightly to stop it crushing him. During his speech before Agincourt he is in genuine pain and sheds tears of regret at the simpler life he has lost. Gwillim plays Henry with more self-doubt and reluctance than I’ve seen from another actor before. It’s a logical progression from the carefree young man of the start of Henry IV Part 1. The price paid of this style of performance is that the big speeches lack the impact that they normally carry. But it’s a very interesting reinterpretation of a famous role – and allows Gwillim to put himself at the opposite end of the spectrum from Olivier’s godlike interpretation.

 

But unfortunately it is at the centre of a very flat production, hideously overlong. Of all the ‘great’ plays, Henry V is possibly one of the weakest, and the decision to remove virtually none of it here (the only really noticeable cut is the deletion of Henry’s threats to the citizens of Harfleur) makes this production a bum-numbing three hours, with too many dreadfully unfunny scenes featuring Pistol antics and leeks left in.

 

For Agincourt, Giles’ delivers his worst battle scenes so far (and the idea of a film of this play including virtually no actual fighting in it is hard to believe) and the empty green ground and blue skies end up neither suggesting a non-realist setting or providing any visual interest. Dramatically the worst of the history productions so far, with lines delivered in profile during long exchanges in scenes lacking drive or purpose. It’s a play with some of the most famous rhetoric in the English language, but it has almost no oomph, no va-va-voom. Part of this is a deliberate decision – but if a production of Henry V doesn’t push some of those buttons at least some of the time, then what is it actually for?

 

This could have been balanced out if more attempt had been made to tackle the subtle, underlying criticism of the war games that kings play which Shakespeare threads through the play. Henry’s war causes no end of death and wipes out his old friends. He threatens hideous vengeance on Harfleur (threats which are cut here) and shows no hesitation in ordering a massacre of prisoners. But these events lack impact – nothing is made of them. They don’t shed light on kingship they just merely seem to happen. Gwillim’s performance of a quieter King would have been a great opportunity to explore the cost of the king from all this death and destruction – but it just doesn’t happen.

 

Even the great scene with Williams and Henry falls flat – there isn’t the sense of a common man (unknowingly) pointing out the logic flaws and ambition of the king, or of Henry having to deal with this. Giles never really confronts Henry with the implications of his actions, or allows the drama to question the cost of Henry’s decisions or his potential selfishness or aggression. Any material of that nature comes solely from Gwillim’s more low-key interpretation.

 

This production clearly wanted to do something different within the restrictions of the series. It’s actually quite admirable that they tried something so artificial on television. But it doesn’t have the courage of its own convictions and doesn’t bring enough interpretation or interest to the play.  I thought from the opening moments I might be in for something special, but instead this is a disappointment.

 

Conclusion

The first time this series has gone for non-realism and artificiality but the production is largely a failure with mediocre direction and acting (outside David Gwillim). In a world awash with Henry V films it doesn’t offer anything new. I can’t imagine this ever being anyone’s favourite film of the play and it falls short of the high spot of Part 2 and the good work in Part 1.

 

Next time: It’s with a small sigh of relief that I move away from these history plays (five out of the first ten! I love the plays but I need a break…) and look forward to Felicity Kendal cross dressing in Twelfth Night.