First transmitted 24th December 1983
 |
Double trouble for Roger Daltrey and Michael Kitchen |
Director: James Cellan Jones
I think the track record of the Shakespearean comedies in
this series has been pretty well established: what works well in front of a
live audience doesn’t always translate well to the screen devoid of that
crucial audience interaction and the buzz of the actors feeding off the audience
and vice versa. Which is to say that this is, despite a few flashes and odd
bits of business, not the funniest production you are ever going to see. There
are two main reasons for this.
Firstly, despite being easily the shortest play in the
series, it still seems longer than it should, because it lacks energy and
momentum. Too many scenes go on a fraction too long, not enough attempt is made
to marry up the importance to the series of clarity and delivery of dialogue
with the essential pace farce relies on. In particular, too much time is spent labouriously
spelling out the various errors made by the characters, overegging the gags. As
the momentum slips in the production, so the tightness of the comedy is
affected, reducing the sense of audience immersion that farce needs. 
The second main reason is that, by and large, it is rather
indifferently acted. To put it bluntly, while some actors try too hard to
deliver comedic “turns” and mug to the camera in flashes of tedious “business”
(often campy), others honestly seem to be slightly out of their depth. Even the
performers who don’t fall into these two camps are underwhelming, as if they
couldn’t quite click with the production, or couldn’t find the right tone. It’s
unclear exactly why this is, but some elements don’t quite make sense. For
example, Ephesus is clearly a laid back kinda place (mime groups and courtesans
clearly have a lot of influence, and its citizens are warm and friendly). Since
it’s clearly an easy going town, why is its Antipholos so up-tight and angry all
the time?
It’s a sign that things haven’t been quite thought through
into a coherent whole. Some of this blame probably needs to lie with James
Cellan Jones who, despite some interesting touches, doesn’t have a consistent
idea for the tone of the play. Which is not to say that some of the ideas are not
rather effective, and it’s clear he wants to put on a production of the play
that is a little bit more than just a straight comedic farce. From the start, Jones
never lets the audience forget that the play is framed around an old man being sentenced
to death for a trite crime, and the decision to have Egeon continually
wondering around the set between scenes, forlornly searching for relief works
very well to keep bringing us back to the serious issues under the surface.
But other ideas don’t quite work. Although I can see that
some people would really hate it, I actually rather enjoyed the mime group at
the start miming out Egeon’s story as he narrates it. It adds some visual
interest to what is otherwise a massive slab of text, even though the mime
group set about their work with the shallow smugness of overpraised young
children. The introduction of the Master of Mime as a character suggests that
the group are going to “see through” all this business from the start and they
will be real presences throughout the production. But then they completely
disappear (aside from a few beats between scenes) from the action, have no
influence on events (other than making some disturbance in the final scene to
allow the Syracuse versions to escape) and offer no commentary or chorus
function. It’s always, I think, rather damning of flourishes like this if they
only work once in a production – if you can’t integrate it all the way through,
you are better going without it.
Then we come into the main comedy scenes themselves. Stanley
Wells makes a rather interesting point about the play in performance, that it
serves the production better to have actors who are not identical as it should be immediately clear to the audience at
all times which of the twins they are watching at any one time. This is
categorically not the case here. This is less to do with the fact that Kitchen
and Daltrey play both versions of the characters, and more to do with the fact
that they are wearing identical costumes (in itself this makes little real
sense) and that the personalities of the two twins are too close to each other.
You do see some clear variations in the final sequences in characterisation when
they appear together (and the split screen work to have them appear
side-by-side actually works rather well considering) but it’s not enough to
really make it clear. I was pretty confused at points, especially with the Dromios
– and when the audience is as unclear about what is going on as the characters,
then a farce doesn’t work.
Of the two main performances in this, Roger Daltrey does an
amiable job and makes a decent fist of playing the role. I read another review
which describes his performance as “amiably amateur” which is pretty much on
the money. It’s not bad, but he fails to differentiate at all between the two Dromios
and he delivers all the lines with too much of a “comedy” acting style, as little
more than thick yokels, gurning through a series of events. This noticeably fails
to make the “find out countries in her” exchange anywhere near as funny as it
should be, with a lack of comic timing and skill in delivery. He’s clearly pleased
to be there, impossible to dislike and does not embarrass himself but is not
really good enough for the part.
Michael Kitchen does a serviceable job as the Antipholi,
with Syracuse as a laid back fun loving kinda guy, who can’t believe his luck
to have women throwing himself at him and has a playful relationship with his
Dromio. His frequent direct addresses to the camera are playful and engagingly light
in tone, making Syracuse an enjoyable companion for the audience. His Ephesus interestingly
comes across as an uptight bastard, a bad husband and a man openly enjoying a
series of affairs (as well as, it is hinted, a quiet awareness of his
sister-in-law’s possible attraction to him) who takes a sub-Fawlty delight in
slapping Dromio around. Two decent performances, but nothing really special.
The ladies in their lives are equally a mixed bag. Suzanne Bertish
is probably a little too shrewish as Adriana, which then makes her coquettish hinting
at sex being an after dinner treat for Syracuse slightly out of whack with the
rest of her characterisation. She does however handle the longer speeches well,
and there is a good sense of her pain and frustration at Ephesus’ obvious lack
of faith and that her own anger stems from genuine feelings she has for him.
She also gets some good moments of comic business, particularly when angrily
preventing a Dromio from tidying away the contents of a table. Joanne Pearce
though is flat out bad as Adriana, delivering her lines with a sing-song
observance of the pentameter and failing to add any depth to the character – I
suspect her simpering delivery is not meant to suggest she is having an affair
with Antipholos of Ephesus, as I at first read it. Ingrid Pitts is embarrassingly
oversexualised as the courtesan, Marsh Fitzalan makes no impression as Luce.
The older actors emerge slightly better. Charles Gray can of
course now deliver this sort of thing standing on his head, and his Duke is a
reasonable authority figure and humanitarian with the expected lecherous tone (very
much Gray’s calling card now). Wendy Hiller adds an authority as Emilia
(although the decision to accompany all her entrances with a Hallelujah chorus
is as clunky as it sounds) as well as a touching sweetness. The acting honours
of the production goes to Cyril Cusack as Egeon who not only brings a real
depth of feeling and fatherly longing to his opening speech, but provides a
large degree of emotion to the final scene – Egeon is probably the only
character in the play that consistently works throughout and makes coherent
sense.
The characters and acting are a mixed bag, but there are
some nice touches here. As mentioned, several of the actors address the camera
at key moments, which certainly makes some of the events more engaging, even if
it doesn’t really help us understand them any better. Some of the small comedic
performances and “near misses” work very well – in particular a moment at the
end of A3 S2 when Antipholus of Ephesus witness his brother leaving his house and
confusedly stares at the wine in his hand with a shake of the head – work very
well, far better in fact than the overly played physical comedy (I’ve already
mentioned the sub-Fawlty bashing of Dromio – never good to remind the viewers
of far superior comedies than this).
The set itself is actually quite an impressive thing,
playfully making no real attempt to present a “real world” instead reducing
Ephesus to a carefully constructed single square, its floor made up of a
wonderfully presented map of Greece, and bright primary colours dominating the
surroundings and the buildings, giving the impression of an almost fairy tale background.
How this ties in with the decisions around Egeon and the harking back to his
sad state I’m less clear about – but it certainly makes the drama visually
interesting. The split screen work to bring both sets of twins on screen at the
same time is actually rather impressive considering the technical limitations
of the time.
But the problem remains that I’m just not clear in the end
exactly what sort of story is actually being told here. When it tries to be a
comedy, it often goes for it far too much to actually be funny. When it focuses
on the framing story, it never builds the mood enough to be actually moving. It’s
a noble attempt at doing a farce with serious undertones on screen – but it
just never clicks into place. Perhaps the core problem is that, deep down, this
is too reverent to the text, willing to sacrifice the pace of the comedy to
make sure that all the dialogue is delivered crystal clearly for the sponsors,
as if the team were worried that to do anything less would be to insult the
playwright.
The main problem is that all the stuff that works best is “televisual”
and all the stuff that brings the film down is the “Shakespeare” stuff – and I
think that is rooted in the fact that James Cellan Jones seems to lack real
knowledge or experience with Shakespeare, making him uncertain how to play the
dialogue or the plot. The camera flourishes work very well, and the idea he has
about Egeon is good – but he basically seems to feel the actual dialogue is not
going to be the source of any humour so never manages to bring any of it out of
the performers. He then makes this worse, by instructing the actors to deliver
it with clarity and respect rather than any comedic energy – a fatal flaw that holes
the production beneath the waterline.
Conclusion
Some decent directorial flourishes and a few effective
scenes and jokes basically get lost in what is overall probably a rather
mediocre production – never outright bad, but often just slightly off beat, off
tone or just missing being truly funny. With a lack of pace, too many scenes
that outstay their welcome and a mixed bag of performances, where every good
performer is matched by a sub-par one, this is a production that isn’t quite
brave enough to cut loose from the text and really embrace making this comedy
effective for film.
NEXT TIME: Tyler
Butterworth and John Hudson are Two
Gentlemen of Verona on the road for fun and romance.