Branagh and Thor...

[fajrdrako]

With "Thor", for example, director Kenneth Branagh and co-star Anthony Hopkins would speak in a Shakespearean shorthand about how we wanted the characters to relate, or what exactly the scene was going to be like. Branagh would say something like, "You remember Act 3, Scene 2 Hamlet - ghost, wine, mum poisoned - done". And suddenly you know

Comments

[auriaephiala]

I've heard Colm Feore say much the same thing recently in a radio interview (he having the Stratford Festival Shakespearean experience, and finding it a general language that works with actors he'd never seen before but who had the Shakespearean background).

Colm Feore...

[fajrdrako]

I love reading or hearing his interviews.

[dejla]

Well, Shakespeare was the playwright to the masses of his day...

[fajrdrako]

Yup, and he created a whole vocabulary of scenarios of human interaction and ideas. So much is in Shakepeare, something I think he left nothing out.

[dejla]

Absolutely. And yet, if it hadn't been for a publishing war and Henry Irving, we might not have Shakespeare today!!

[mmegaera]

That sounds classically Branagh. I suspect it's a standard classically-trained actor thing, though.