Comments | angevin2: upon my head and all this famous land

angevin2

upon my head and all this famous land

Oct 30, 2009 20:30

From Margaret Shewring's book on Richard II in performance, some comments on Maurice Evans' televised 1954 production:

By concentrating on the play's changing balance in power between Richard and Bolingbroke, the broadcast version offered a clarity of through-line. Marvin Rosenberg draws attention to a Californian newspaper review which 'noted ( Read more... )

edward ii, richard ii, shakespeare on teevee

Comments 11

lareinenoire October 31 2009, 02:24:04 UTC

On the utility of Sir Piers Exton as Shakespearean MacGuffin?

angevin2 October 31 2009, 02:28:08 UTC

*cracks up*

Well, here, this is what the note actually says:

Forker, p. 458 (5.4, headnote). It is not unheard of for directors to alter this sequence to either clarify Henry’s involvement, or enhance the audience’s emotional response. Jeremy Mortimer’s 1999 production for BBC Radio 3 begins the scene with some interpolated dialogue from Henry (Damian Lewis): “Sir Pierce of Exton, at a later time / We will hold council; until then, adieu.” Maurice Evans’ 1954 production for NBC went so far as to insert an entire scene between Henry and Exton with dialogue borrowed Marlowe’s Edward II, 5.4 (Margaret Shewring, Shakespeare in Performance: King Richard II [Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996], 141). Occasionally Exton’s role is taken by a character more familiar to the audience: in Michael Boyd’s 2007-08 RSC production he was replaced with Bagot; in Claus Peymann’s 1999 Berliner Ensemble production, somewhat inexplicably, with York.

lareinenoire October 31 2009, 02:29:14 UTC

...YORK?

angevin2 October 31 2009, 02:30:41 UTC

DUDE I KNOW
I KNOW

I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT EITHER, BUT THAT IS WHAT THE PROGRAM NOTES SAY

Thread 6

tekalynn October 31 2009, 09:09:58 UTC

"'You got Edward in my Richard!'"

"'No, you got Richard in my Edward!'"

"Bolinbroke/Lightborn...for ALL your kinky, ren-drama slash fantasies! (Poker not included.)"

Oh god, that is just made of wrong. So very, very wrong. *sob*

executrix October 31 2009, 13:47:28 UTC

Two-squared (Edward/Richard) vid to "Poker Face" for Yuletide?

angevin2 October 31 2009, 16:08:24 UTC

It's like the fic the_alchemist wrote for me for last year's ficathon. The Plantagenets: serving your incestuous spectral voyeurism needs since...pretty much square one, actually.

"Well, how does it work? What have you been doing for the last..." Richard considered trying to count on his fingers again, but decided against it. "What have you been doing since you died?"

"Oh, this and that. Looking at young men getting undressed. Scaring cats. Um... more young men. That sort of thing. You know."

"You've spent... however many decades, or centuries or whatever hanging around young men's bedrooms like some kind of ethereal peeping Tom?"

"They didn't just strip, you know. It was much more exciting than that. Take you and the stable boy, for instance..."

highfantastical October 31 2009, 11:08:09 UTC

Ahaha, I find that BAFFLING and yet SOMEHOW ALSO QUITE HILARIOUS.

Yay Renaissance crossovers!

liseuse October 31 2009, 13:23:36 UTC

That is a truly truly strange idea.

It was me! I'm glad it came in handy!