The Tempest (Series 2 Episode 5)

First Broadcast 27th February 1980

Michael Hordern opens graves at his command in The Tempest

Cast: Michael Hordern (Prospero), David Dixon (Ariel), Pippa Guard (Miranda), Christopher Guard (Ferdinand), Warren Clarke (Caliban), Nigel Hawthorne (Stephano), Andrew Sachs (Trinculo), David Waller (Alonso), John Nettleton (Gonzalo), Derek Godfrey (Antonio), Alan Rowe (Sebastian)
Director: David Gorrie

I’ve always found The Tempest a strange piece of theatre. In some ways it’s a very tightly structured piece of work – Act 1 introduces all the characters; Acts 2 and 3 split them into clear groupings with two scenes for each (Prospero/Miranda/Ferdinand, the shipwrecked lords, Stephano/Trinculo/Caliban – with only Ariel moving between these matchings); Act 4 draws them back together in one long scene with Prospero and Ariel pulling the strings; and Act 5, in another long scene, ties everything up in a neat bow. It’s the only Shakespeare play I can think of that balances three simultaneous plotlines like this, and the economy with which it is done points out the Bard’s strengths as a narrative structuralist – something I think that often gets missed (not least because many of the plays are at point flabbily structured).

Now I think this bow is all too neat, but this is probably related to the fact I have twice played Antonio and never really felt I found a convincing reason for why he accepts losing his Dukedom, and I always found it puzzling that he offers no lines in the final scene to Prospero (not even to say sorry!) and falls back on cheap cracks about Caliban looking like a fish. However, that is a very personal note about this play. For the record I think Derek Godfrey does a decent job here, though he and Sebastian sometimes seem more like a pair of bitchy whiners than would-be murderers. But that’s partly Shakespeare’s fault.

In other ways this is a bizarre, almost dreamlike play with constant questions over whether what we are seeing is even real, strange inconsistencies in time (Ferdinand seems to have been labouring for days but only hours seem to go by for Stephano and Trinculo), and a vague message about forgiveness threaded through the play (although in other ways Prospero is quite the bully and tyrant). As with As You Like It, Shakespeare is playing with the ideas of theatricality by creating a non-realist dreamlike world, perhaps a tip of the hat to the fact that the Globe theatre company could never have created the actual island setting (and storm) that the play demands.

So creating the island in a TV studio should really work, right? Well no. Because again the set is an earnest attempt at creating a “real” location, but rather than going with bright colours and suggestions of a location on a budget, this island is a glum, muddy, shabby-looking papier-mache island, with the obligatory rocks, bushes and birdsong soundtrack, and so overlit that it appears as artificial and unmagical as possible. It’s all part of a painful earnestness around John Gorrie’s production that experiments with magic and special effects at certain moments, but settles for men in tights trudging around a fake beach. It’s flat and lifeless throughout and lacking in colour in every sense. Every scene is flatly shot from an “audience” prospective with no attempt made to exploit any of the potential visual interest of the rocky outcrops that form Prospero’s shelter.

As a director, John Gorrie seems at a loss with what to do here with the play, totally lacking the strong sense of place, narrative drive and visual style that he brought to Twelfth Night. This is clear throughout his failure to really exploit the special effects and editing tricks that TV has available to it. David Dixon’s Ariel disappears into thin air a few times (usually after a run and jump) and can be seen as a transparent spirit but that’s about it. He still moves normally (editing isn’t used to, say, make him appear at one side of the frame than at the other in quick succession) and in one strange moment he grows massive wings for no real reason.  It stands out in the mind as it is the only such moment in the play. It’s not helped by the decision to cover Dixon in bronze body paint and for him to deliver all his lines in a sing-song manner that quickly begins to grate.

The appearance of the rest of the sprites hammers home the problem. The spirits are either operatic singers or painted male dancers in loin clothes who (camp alert!) move erotically around their fellow actors and the table of food in A4 S1, all the while gurning their various emotions. These extended sequences look particularly feeble today, so used are we to far better done (and more interestingly filmed) group dances on Strictly Come Dancing. These sequences also go on for a quite considerable time (a good ten minutes throughout the production is given over to singing and dancing sprites), more than enough to start biting into any viewer’s interest.

It’s a shame because it actually starts rather well with the storm sequence, which has a filmic quality notably absent from the rest of the production – it’s by far and away the most exciting and well-filmed segment of the film. On close inspection, yes, this section is clearly as studio-bound as the rest, but it looks a hell of a lot better and, despite the camera work being pretty flat, it’s also visually very interesting.  There is a motif throughout the production of characters standing in close-up at edges of the frame, looking in towards the rest of the action. This seems designed to suggest a sense of the island being “full of noises” and an atmosphere of watching. Sadly this visual idea doesn’t carry across very well into the mood of the film, or in the use of Ariel and the other sprites (the main watchers) – so maybe it was a directorial flourish rather than an interpretative idea.

The performances also vary. We should start of course with Prospero himself. Michael Hordern stepped into the breach as a last minute replacement for John Gielgud after scheduling prevented the great man from appearing. Hordern gives a lot of vocal strength to his interpretation, making Prospero into a sort of retired university don, his weathered features nicely suggesting the years he has spent in harsh conditions on the island. He also brings some of the sharpness and testiness of a bitter old man to his interactions with others, as well as a possessive neediness over Miranda (the sequence in A1 S1 where Prospero effectively outlines the backstory and constantly asks her to affirm she is listening is very good). His Prospero is a country gentleman driven to fury against those who have wronged him, scolding them like a schoolmaster and imperiously ruling over events with the air of one born to the position. But he also brings a great little note of sadness at the end of the play, realising that, with the loss of his staff and the island, he has surrendered everything which made him unique – it leads in very nicely to the famous final speech, where Hordern breaks the fourth wall and addresses the viewer directly.

However, when it comes to his daughter, I’m not quite sure what he’s worried about to be honest. Real-life cousins Christopher and Pippa Guard are so lacking in chemistry that the chances of him undoing her “virgin knot” seem remote to say the least. Christopher Guard makes nothing of the part of Ferdinand, here an earnest but terminally dull young man with no sense of character. Pippa Guard wildly overacts as a simpering and wet Miranda, her performance painfully over-theatrical in both vocal mannerisms and gestures. Rarely has such a chaste pairing been seen on screen.

The shipwrecked lords also give similarly uninspired performances. Derek Godfrey and Alan Rowe do the best that they can with the complete lack of interpretative depth given to Antonio and Sebastian. John Nettleton’s Gonzalo is little more than a silly old buffer. David Waller gives a strikingly poor, disengaged performance as Alonso. Over-dressed in tights and period detail, the two scenes concentrating on this group fall totally flat.

So, for the first time in this series, it’s the comedy pairings that really work. Nigel Hawthorne brings an excellent bombastic quality to Stephano. He combines this with a great playful quality – in A4 S1 he even plays the “I begin to have bloody thoughts” line with a playful glee, as if revelling in new-found naughtiness. It’s a performance full of relish at assuming a position of grandeur and is actually funny – no mean feat in this series, as we have seen. Andrew Sachs backs him up nicely as Trinculo, although he does seem a little like an English Manuel. Warren Clarke’s tortured Caliban is a highlight however, bubbling with resentment in A1 S2 but also moved to tears at remembering Prospero’s past kindness, a fragile neediness in his character making his later joyous embracing of Stephano make sense.

This is a decent adaptation of a play that can often come across as slightly flat production, with many lightly sketched characters. There are some decent performances, but it’s muddily filmed and rather dull in places and lacks a real sense of drama. There are some solid performances but nothing outstanding, although Hordern, Hawthorne and Clarke do some good work. I’m not sure a film can be really made of this most theatrical of pieces, but I’m certain that a better fist of it can be made than this production.

Conclusion
Not going to win any new fans to the play, this ticks all the boxes but does so with such diligence you can almost picture the director and producer clasping a clipboard and pencil during filming. Not the worst film, but certainly not the best.

NEXT TIME: It’s the big one – Derek Jacobi returns to play the Dane (for what must have been the 700^th time in his life) in Hamlet.

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.