The Comedy of Errors (Series 6 Episode 3)

First transmitted 24th December 1983

Double trouble for Roger Daltrey and Michael Kitchen

Cast: Michael Kitchen (Antipholus of Ephesus/Antipholus of Syracuse), Roger Daltrey (Dromio of Ephesus/Dromio of Syracuse), Suzanne Bertish (Adriana), Joanne Pearce (Luciana), Cyril Cusack (Egeon), Charles Gray (Duke of Ephesus), Wendy Hiller (Emilia), Ingrid Pitt (Courtesan), Nicholas Chagrin (Master of Mime), Sam Dastor (Angelo), David Kelly (Balthazar), Frank Williams (Officer), Marsha Fitzalan (Luce), Geoffrey Rose (Dr. Pinch)

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.

Richard II (Series 1 Episode 2)

Richard II

First transmitted 10th December 1978





Jon Finch and Derek Jacobi lay the foundations for civil war in the poetic opening to Shakespeare's history cycle

Cast: Derek Jacobi (Richard II), Jon Finch (Henry Bolingbroke), John Gielgud (John of Gaunt), Charles Gray (York), Wendy Hiller (Duchess of York), Mary Morris (Duchess of Gloucester), David Swift (Northumberland), Clifford Rose (Bishop of Carlisle), Charles Keating (Aumerle), Richard Owens (Mowbray), Janet Maw (Queen), Jeffrey Holland (Surrey), Jeremy Bulloch (Henry Percy), Robin Sachs (Bushy), Damien Thomas (Bagot), Alan Dalton (Green), Jonathan Adams (Gardener)

Director: David Giles

 

The second production in the series is a starrily-cast Richard II.  And what we get here is a very skilled, professional attempt at capturing this play on screen. As a play, Richard II demands a sense of scale, colour and pageantry – and perhaps, therefore, it’s one of the hardest to convey from a 4 by 3 box in the corner of a room.

 

The faithful adaptation style from R and J is continued here, with the setting exactly in period and adhering very faithfully to mainstream critical interpretations of the play. Forced by budget and house style, this is a chamber piece, a well acted conversation placed in a series of rooms or meetings at camps and tents in dead of night. When the film does move into a daytime ‘exterior’ sector, for the trial by combat in A1 S3, this is easily the least successful scene of the production, with some concessions made to the spectacle of the moment but the camera unable to move from close-ups (for fear of exposing the unrealistic set) to help create a sense of scope and tension. But what this film does know is what it can do with in its limits, and it does them very well. As a costume drama this is a very well made example of 1970s British television.

 

Giles’ direction is faithful and unimposing, using careful camera moves and framing to communicate the story simply and clearly. His focus is very much on character and performance. The direction aims at creating a claustrophobic world in which the psychology of the drama and the characters is established as keenly as possible. This more intense, focused drama plays to Giles’ strengths and it’s telling that he is far more comfortable when dealing with the more intimate scenes, which are constantly more visually interesting and dynamic than the crowd scenes. It’s rather odd – and has a big impact on the success of the opening scenes, which largely consist of large group scenes. Compare the flatness of A1 S1 with the far more dynamic and engaging two-hander in A1 S2. It’s a very telling contrast to the more ‘large scale’ R and J with its large cast of extras – here extras, when they appear, are almost shoved to the edges of the frame, as if to avoid distracting the eye as much as possible. Giles is a highly experienced studio director, and his experience working with a few actors on a close set is really clear here.

 

This production makes motions towards a more complex interpretation than the first film in the series. Before the first line of the play, Richard pauses outside the court and seems to draw breath and compose himself, preparing himself to publically take on the role of King or readying himself for a difficult confrontation. It’s strongly implied in Act 1 that Richard is behind the death of Gloucester that sparks the events of the play, a small point but one which informs a lot of Jacobi’s performance (and his cool, dismissive reactions to Mowbray) and Owens’ anger and disillusionment as Mowbray. The nature of ruling is also explored, with Richard shown as more interested in lounging around getting massages than involving himself in the business of running the country. This is a sharp contrast with Bolingbroke who is rarely seen not sitting surrounded with papers, with a hands-on style of ruling. Points like these illustrate a desire to develop an interpretation of the play, although these are kept very low key and subtle and not allowed to intrude too heavily on the actors’ performances.

 

Which is in no way a weakness, because this production has some hugely successful performances. Derek Jacobi is one of the most intelligent classical actors alive, and he brings all the focus of that intelligence to this production. Reflecting the nature of the play, his performance splits Richard into two distinct phases with the flip coming during Act Three. At first Richard is a smiling tyrant, an uncaring man convinced of his own divine certainty and seemingly incapable of understanding other people. Throughout, he treats Bolingbroke, Gaunt and especially Mowbray with a lightness and imperious cheerfulness, and a cruel streak is shown throughout with his openly giddy and joyful reaction to Gaunt’s death and his appointment of York as his deputy, which Jacobi plays almost like a private joke. He’s the sort of man who airily knocks four years off Bolingbroke’s banishment on a whim and breezily talks about his “uneasiness” before smilingly banishing Mowbray for life.  It’s clear why so many lords feel so little regard for him.

 

This then flips expertly from Act 3, as Richard’s world comes crashing down, with Jacobi delivering a rollercoaster of challenging line readings and widely oscillating emotions. In A3 S2 alone he goes from imperious confidence through, in-turn, mad-eyed certainty, despair, rage, impotent fury, heartfelt anguish, tears, desolation, resignation, self-realisation and finally a kindling of humility and humanity – all within about ten minutes of screen time and never feeling forced or misplaced. Jacobi’s Richard is being re-born during this sequence and realising he is not a god but a man who “needs bread as you do”. This sequence continues in Act 4, a tour-de-force deposition scene, with Richard torn between bitterness and the fixed neutrality of a man compelled to do an unpleasant duty. This tension only explodes once offered a list of his ‘crimes’ by Northumberland, bringing out a burst of pain and defiance at the turn-coats that surround him, but without losing his developing sense of humanity. It’s quite something to take a character so unsympathetic in the opening hour and make him someone the audience really roots for. It is performances like this that justify the BBC’s decision to chase down the big name actors.

 

Jon Finch is a great match for him as a controlled and faintly sinister Bolingbroke, giving his performance a physicality that makes him an imposing threat from the start. If Richard is a tyrant in the sense that he doesn’t really care about the country or the people in it, Bolingbroke wants to control everything and everyone – and doesn’t have a problem with judicial murders (poor Bushy and Green) or quietly (with plausible deniability) ordering royal assassinations.  There’s a touch of masculine cruelty about him – he’s probably the first Bolingbroke I’ve seen to turn “rain on the earth my waters” into a piss joke.

 

The best supporting performance here surprisingly comes from Charles Gray’s York, a well meaning, morally upright but ineffectual old buffer, almost drifted in from Wodehouse, out of his depth when dealing with strong wills like Bolingbroke and Northumberland and constantly a few moments away from tears. He may be disgusted by Bolingbroke’s actions in A2 S3 but still feels compelled to offer him a shelter for the night and raises token objections in A3 S2 but still sit on a tribunal to condemn two innocent men. By A5 S2 he needs to get drunk to tell his wife about Bolingbroke’s coronation and Richard’s imprisonment. It’s a lovely pen portrait of a weak man in a position of responsibility and influence, blown from pillar to post by those around him.

 

Other performances are less successful. I was less persuaded by Gielgud’s Gaunt, who (similar to his Chorus in R and J) speaks the lines perfectly but with a strange absence of feeling (his farewell to Bolingbroke is notably unmoving). He delivers the famous speech of the play expertly with a teary emotion but I felt he was slightly miscast, that Gaunt needed a bit more of the earthy, domineering quality that Finch’s Bolingbroke has. Most of the rest of the cast only have small moments to shine, but Richard Owens is a fine Mowbray, Clifford Rose makes a lot of a few small moments as a militant Carlisle and, after a shaky start, David Swift is a bull-like, unsubtle Northumberland. For Star Wars fans there is a chance to see Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch without helmet as an energised Henry Percy. I was less keen on Charles Keating’s underplayed Aumerle, and cuts to the Queen’s already small part mean Janet Maw arrives almost too late to make any real impression.

 

There are some unusual cuts in this play. Most of A2 S2 is removed, making the arrival of Bolingbroke in the country actually a little unclear. Cutting the opening of Act 4 leaves the fate of Bagot a plot-hole. A combination of trims and underplaying in A3 S3 undermines the impact of the gardener’s scene. If they wanted to make cuts, some trims to A1 S1 and S3 – both static talking shops in this production – would have been a far better choice. There are also several moments in the play that, to be honest, don’t really work. I’ve already mentioned the pacing errors in the opening scenes, but Giles doesn’t really solve the strange ‘comedy’ sequence of Act Five involving the York family pleading against each other over the fate of Aumerle. An attempt is made at playing the comedy of the moment, but it feels even more out of place with the rest of the play (and pity Wendy Hiller that this is her only appearance in the project). Bolingbroke’s exasperated final reaction shot here also doesn’t work at all.

 

But plenty of things work well. Giles does a lot with creative framing and character movement. Throughout the film, Richard constantly ascends and descends raised platforms, moving from solitary positions then bringing himself down to the same level as his subjects (some examples can be seen in the images above). There is also some lovely use of York, placing him fairly consistently at the front of the frame, almost as a chorus for scenes, suggesting not only his isolation from Bolingbroke and his followers but also his status in this production as the most sympathetic and humane of the characters and the viewers’ window into the action.

 

The finest directorial decision is the delivery of Richard’s final monologue in A5 S5. The speech is split into five chunks, with each chunk prefaced by a cut of Richard in a new position in his prison cell, using a visual shorthand to show both the passage of time and the completion of Richard’s long journey into self realisation. In each the camera drifts slowly but tellingly in towards Richard, stressing his own introspection and his claustrophobic isolation. It’s a very clever way of using a small set and a truly cinematic way of interpreting the speech and something that could not be done on stage, and it works very effectively, creating one of the production’s highlights. But these are unobtrusive flourishes in some very unfussy visual direction.

 A montage of the different positions and placements used for Richard's final speech

I found this blog more challenging to write than the last, possibly because I expected this – particularly after the poorly paced opening scenes – to be a dry shadow of the later Rupert Goold-directed Hollow Crown version. But this manages to hold its own. It’s not completely perfect, but in terms of acting and drama it’s a major step-up from Romeo and Juliet and, in its decision to focus on exteriors and night times, it uses the restrictions of studio filming far more to its advantage. Also, while Giles might have less flair as a director, he has far more ideas about the play and about how to work with actors and direct smaller scenes, which on the whole is more important than Alvin Rakoff’s flair. I have to say I really enjoyed this production and would definitely watch it again.

Conclusion
Some very impressive acting (particularly a stunning lead performance from Derek Jacobi) and unobtrusive direction make up for some poorly paced scenes to create a pretty impressive stab at producing a small-scale spectacle of a play. Not everything completely works, but there is enough here that succeeds to make this entertaining and moving viewing. Well done BBC!

Next up: Helen Mirren and James Bolam go frolicking in the forest of Arden in As You Like It.