Othello, National Theatre

Anna and I had booked tickets to see Rory Kinnear do Othello, or as we call the play "Iago" as soon as they were released. We are huge Rory fans. Rory did not disappoint, without him that play was just another Othello, same as always. I can see how people would be impressed with the sets and staging but really it wasn't bold or edgy, it looked good but really it was very traditional, Nick Hytner doesn't take risks anymore, I'm glad he's stepping down as artistic director. The play was good and everyone was good and Rory of course was magnificently horrid but the play we saw the second day put how just average it was into perspective.

Julius Caesar, Donmar

My first trip back to a real theatre was a trip to see a play I'd heard reviewed on Front Row before Christmas. I didn't know it was happening and I don't know if I'd be interested in it if I hadn't heard a clip of dialogue on the radio and thought 'is that Harriet Walter?' I'm a big fan of Harriet, she's got amazing stage presence. Not many women do it for me on stage but she totally does, as does Fiona Shaw and Nancy Carroll.
An all female cast of Julius Caesar? I haven't seen many gimmicky plays before but I'd seen Julius Caesar twice (and reviewed it twice I think!) It was terrible and boring both times. I thought perhaps if I saw someone I really like (and trust) as an actor doing it I might actually like it.
And I did! It was the first time I'd seen the language really well done, the actors were all good enough that they knew how to deliver Shakespeare! Harriet was great as Brutus and Cush Jumbo (who I once saw as a fab Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion and more recently saw doing a good comic turn at the National in She Stoops to Conquer) was an amazing Mark Anthony, totally fab.
The concept was still a bit iffy at times and I wasn't sure about the rock numbers- though at least they passed the battle scenes without the usual boredom when men do it!
Good actors make good Shakespeare.

King Lear, Almeida

 So I've been waiting for it for what, ten years? Seems like it. But it was announced a year ago Jonathan Pryce, Jonathan Pryce, my favourite actor, master of despair, break-down acting and also comedy and musical, Jonathan Pryce would be doing King Lear. I almost didn't get a ticket! I waited up til midnight and got two of the last seats. Thank you appendix, wherever you are now (insinerated I hope) thank you for waiting for after the play to start exploding! Jonathan was great. There have been so many Lears recently, Jacobi, McKellen, Poslethwaite, did Patrick Stewart do one too? How would Jonathan play it? Well, as I always excpected, and of course hoped, he played it sexually! The reason the other daughters hated him and Cordelia so much was that he'd abused them and not her. It makes sense! And we're not talking abused one time, he's still doing it! Even though both daughters are married and have their own castles!! What a shit! I was happy he died. Edmund was particularly good too, he played it Geordie and every single thing he said was so easily accessible compared to the way some of the other actors delivered their Shakespeare. I'm sure it's something to do with him being a Geordie... Anyway, maybe it was my appendicitis kicking in and making me crazy but when Jonathan Pryce was being uber disgusting and filthy sexual, while other members of the audience (Alison, Bill Paterson, etc.) were vomitting into their handbags I was all like 'phoar!'
I will never get over how ace he is.

Henry V, Globe

The Globe finished their World Shakespeare Season with Henry V, and also launched their new season with it. Jamie Parker returned as Hal and was as charming and cocky and young-Kenny-Brannagh as ever. We'd seen Henry IV parts one and two last year at the cinema and my god they were fantastic, so much better than the BBC's Hollow Crown series, Simon Russell Beale can fuck right off, he is a charmless slime-bucket, we love you Roger Allam, your Falstaff is my dream man, I was horrified at his "death scene cameo" (a large covered corpse was carried off) in Henry V. Yes, it was a good show and I'm glad I saw them all, but I miss Falstaff and as soon as it was over we went straight to the shop and bought Henry IV parts one and two on dvd to give to Dad-Y for birthday. Making this June!

Julius Ceasar, Globe

The day after Rufus Alison had to work so I went to see this Italian production of Julius Casear at the Globe as part of their World Shakespeare Season- all the works of Shakespeare in 40 different languages. Anna, who booked the tickets and then couldn't come, speaks Italian. I don't. There were no subtitles but I've seen the play, I know what's happening... I managed to sell my extra ticket to an Italian girl and then we went and watched it. Ok... It was an avant-garde, minamilist sort of thing, modern dress too, but I followed the weak visual puns (lightbulb held over head, writhing in torment, etc.) and I followed the plot. My favourite bit was when they all killed 'Ceasar'... Ceasar was played by a leather chair with the seat punched out. Later on when each character died, they sat in the chair- you know, it's symbolic... Ha!!! It was tripe! And the Italian audience bloody loved it! Actually, my real favourite bit was when the old ladies in front of me who had been following their English texts throughout the performance said after the chair-murder to each other "I think the chap with the moustache is Caesar." That was Brutus!! Caesar had already been killed!! How could they not follow it?! Jeez!

Anonymous (2011)

Good take on the 'who wrote Shakespeare's plays' theme. Nice acting and good story even if the script was a bit terrible, and I love it when acting families play older and younger versions of the same character. See photo of Joely Richardson playing young Queen Elizabeth and her mum Vanessa Redgrave playing older Bess. Thumbs up from British-actor-geek Amy!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Theatre Royal Haymarket)

I finally got to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I am so very pleased I did!
I know Hamlet like the back of my hand what with seeing so many versions lately, so I loved all the scenes where Ros and Guil had to do their lines and just deal with it all! I loved the scenes with the Players, excellent fun and I loved the scenes where it was just the two of them- though when they lasted longer than twenty minutes they got a bit tedious... Existentialism isn't that great. Probably would have got tedious quicker if they hadn’t been played by lovely lovely Posner and Scripps. God, they were just too cute! Jamie Parker and Sam Barnett, always my favourite History Boys, I love seeing you both on stage. They made it so very entertaining. Such sweeties.
I love fanfics.

Henry IV Part One and Part Two (Shakespeare's Globe)

Last weekend Anna and I went to the cinema to Shakespeare's Globe 2010 production of Henry IV- part one on saturday and part two on sunday.
We phyiscally saw (at the Globe) the production of The Merry Wives of Windsor that they're also screening at the cinema, about four years ago, it was absolutely wonderful and tons of fun. Andrew Havill in particualr as Ford was hilarious I remember. But that was the only expeience I'd had of Falstaff, played by Christopher Benjamin as the disgusting fat old wretch you expect when you read Falstaff.
I have chosen to post a photo of Roger Allam's Falstaff and his gang from part two rather than a photo of the two lovelies Sam Crane and Jamie Parker as Hotspur and Hal from part one because though, as I've cleary indicated, the boys were utterly lovely and such bloody good actors- Crane a brilliant creepy villain (and, above, a fun Russell Brand impersonator), Parker the ultimate young leading Shakespearean hero, such a natural charming actor, god, he was like a young Kenny Brannagh except Scripps!!- Anyway, I've chosen to post Falstaff here because I love Falstaff. Roger Allam was so so good. He won the Olivier, we all knew he was going to be good, the reviews were great but, man, he was SO good! I mean, yes, I've had a crush on him for a long time. Even as Falstaff with the padding on, he was such a fucking charming, warm, and witty, handsome coward! He was not a disgusting Falstaff and everything he said made perfect sense to me!!
Hot. This is getting tagged under 'handsomes'. Not for Scripps, not for Crane, for Allam.
Anyway, wonderful staging, so accessible, brilliant acting and ensemble. Part one was so much fun, part two was a tad depressing, especially as Allam was such a lovable Falstaff (don't like the idea of him dying in Henry V). I would have loved to have seen the shows live at the Globe and I'm so glad I got to see them now! I hope more theatres start filming and then showing in cinemas, instead of hiding them all away for the public never to see...

The Tempest (2011)

Very easy to follow but unimaginative version of the Tempest, I did enjoy it but it was nothing special. Everyone did very well with their words (Brandy included- though he already talks like that so I never thought Shakespeare would be a challenge for him). The costumes were irritating, all the zips just looked cheap, Caliban's loincloth looked like designer gear next them... Being one of Shakey's magical plays There were a lot of trippy special effects but they were not impressive, they were quite embarrassing and I feel would have been done exactly the same way in 1970 (lots of kalidescoping), still though I wasn't that embarrassed when I thought about it, I mean, what else can you do with sprites and magic?!

Finally the root of the problem. Forget the zips and the whirly special effects. The casting of a woman in a male role completely changed the tone of the piece and it ended up not working at all. Mirren's performance was solid. But the ending was completely changed.

Prospero is a man full of anger, he tortures his enemies but in the end his heart softens thanks to seeing his daughter fall in love and so he does not kill, he forgives. This is a very strong character. He rose above his emotions and he found peace. Well done.

Prospera is a woman scorned, she tortures her enemies but in the end she forgives them. This is a very weak character. She is woman and so she could never really go through with it anyway, she did what all women do, she let her heart soften and she forgave them and gave up her magic, resigning herself to death.

In conclusion: Men and women are different and what may be a great strength in a man can be seen as a weakness in a woman. Helen Mirren should have killed those fuckers and the final shot should have been her on Caliban's shoulders waving her stick and cackling. Avenged.

Twelfth Night (National Theatre)

Disappointing trip to the National Theatre.

It's cheaper than the rest of the West End, it is after all supposed to be the people's theatre, the plays are well chosen and have high production value also there's a good quality of actors- no big names, just big stage talent, so no awful audiences being inappropriate (like at a David Tennant play where Doctor Who fans whoop and cheer when he bends over).

Twelfth Night, it's hard to get it wrong isn't it? It's funny and it's a classic. Peter Hall's Twelfth Night wasn't wrong, but it just wasn't anything special.

The costumes were lovely but if you're going all out on period costumes why not put some thought into the set and the staging? This production would have been fantastic just as it was at The Globe or out in the air, but because it was on an empty square stage in a small theatre it looked cramped at the same time as being bare.

The acting was fine, it was a good ensemble, but it was let down by the leading lady. Rebecca Hall is a beautiful girl. But she is not an androgynous beautiful girl! Giving all the men long hair as well did not make her look any less like a beautiful girl! So yes, her look was wrong, she wasn't Cesario, she was always Viola, but more than that unfortunately, the way she acted it was wrong. She was always grinning and sighing to the audience, her reactions were always the same to everything, she got so passionate for no reasons! It was like watching a sixth form play when she was on. And this is the lead!! Another play with another gimmick to let it down! This time the gimmick was that it was the director's daughter. She was miscast.

Finty Williams, Charles Edwards, Simon Callow and all that lot were all fine as the comedy, that was Twelfth Night, but the romance was lost. Orsino and Olivia both seemed too old and Orsino and Viola had no chemistry, Sebastian was ok when he turned up but the comedy is supposed to be in the confusion, they had gone to too much effort of looking the same and so the fact that their faces were so different made it so obvious that they were not the same person! The last production I saw of this used actors who looked nothing alike but wore the same hat, now THAT is comedy.

I will stick to the BBC film starring Imogen Stubbs in the future. At least she wore a false moustache.

Hamlet (National Theatre)

Finally! Finally after two years of thinking about it constantly we got to see Rory Kinnear's Hamlet.

I think one of my first posts here was about Kenny Brannagh's Hamlet, always a favourite, started my Shakespeare obsession as well as my troublesome actor obsession. I think I spent a lot of the review comparing it to David Tennant's Hamlet, which I saw a couple of times and enjoyed, but this is the one, the one I had been waiting for... Beloved Rory!

I have probably talked about Rory in glowing terms here before, but let me just recap, I first saw him in the NT's The Man of Mode, an excellent fool, apparently it was after his show-stealing, award-winning success in this that they decided he would play Hamlet, but first they had to show him off, no one is going to come and see Roy Kinnear's son play Hamlet, no one's even heard of him! So they gave him some starring roles; wastrel son in The Philistines, desperate, blood-thirsty and betrayed in The Revengers Tragedies, clever, very clever angry young man in Burnt by the Sun. Such success! All amazing! All perfection and so different!! On a break he did Measure for Measure at the Almeida and got married and is now pregnant (dagger through our hearts, Rory!) But here is Hamlet!

David Tennant found much success in his comic Hamlet, he played it funny, his Hamlet was a character. Rory does not play a character, he plays THE character. He is the written Hamlet, he obviously understands it all, and because the actor understands what he is acting, my god, the audience knows too! Every meaning was crystal clear, it was all about the words- THE WORDS!

He's a clever actor. And you do need to be clever to deliver something clever- like when I saw The Power of Yes and only understood certain actors, because if a stupid actor recites some lines it usually doesn't matter, he's still an actor, he can make it work. If some pretty, spiky haired Scottish boy tells you the Earth is about to explode that's fine, we can get that, but if he doesn't get it, I'm not going to either... Tennant was good, he found jokes in it, but seeing Rory, well there's SO MUCH MORE! God, Shakespeare is so good when Rory does it!! He's a clever bastard!!

Now let's talk why the production all over was glorious.

The set, for a change at the National Theatre, was lackluster, but it didn't matter, not once the acting started, and if, like I say, acted by compelling actors, who gives a shit what the set was like? This production was all about the words. The idea of a totalitarian state was conveyed in the Tennant Hamlet through surveilance cameras littering the set (in the BBC film version anyway)- that was it. In Nicholas Hytner's current production it is truly TERRIFYING. The addresses to the state are done to camera for the people and when finished the mood in the palace changes completely, is everything a lie? No soliloquy is unheard, Claudius' people are everywhere, Ophelia is bugged while confronting Hamlet, the players are all killed instantly for knowing too much! Ophelia is murdered for the inconvenience of her madness! Claudius is a cold fucking psycho.

At last, in Patrick Malahide you see a Claudius who did not kill for love, he killed solely for that crown! And his alchy bride Claire Higgins' Gertrude is expendable, after a while you get the feeling she went along with the marriage just to stay alive! It's only the booze that keeps her smiling! The ghost! Of course she sees the ghost!- She believes her son! Because a mother would!! Brilliant direction. Claudius was evil, just evil. After seeing this version I just found both Tennant's and Brannagh's so unbelievable, their characters' motives seemed all wrong, both of those Hamlets were full of love, this is not a Shakespeare romance, it's a fucking tragedy! Everyone was full of bile and evil! Brilliant!!

God, I loved it, I fucking loved it.

King Lear (York Theatre Royal)

Anna and I went to a fundraising event in York, it was a recorded reading of King Lear with a bunch of well known actors, they were there firstly to raise money for the theatre and secondly to celebrate the life and work of Freddie Jones -who played Lear.

Well, we certainly celebrated his life afterwards as I got to go after-partying way into the night and had far too much to drink! But I shall review the reading not the party, maybe i should have a separate blog for parties- though it wouldn't say anything because the best parties are the ones I'm too pissed to remember!

Freddie was great as Lear but the people I really enjoyed were Patterson Joseph as Edgar, the guy who played Kent and all the girls- particulalry Niamh Cusack's horrible flirty Goneril. I liked meeting her afterwards she was lovely. I told Freddie that he was my favourite Ghost of Motley Hall and that made him laugh, especially as I added "Don't tell Nick," who was of course there too, how else could I go to the after-party!? So Nick le Prevost played Gloucester and it turns out hearing someone get their eyes ripped out is still as horrific as watching it.

I will stick a picture up here when the theatre posts some- (edit: rubbish photo!)

Measure for Measure (The Almeida)

Though it is Duke Vincentio's play (handsome Ben Miles) it is Rory Kinnear's Angelo who is in a different play all together. Rory is the reason I go to the theatre. He wasn't in it enough, but the scenes he had were amazing; funny, creepy, intense, he's the reason Shakespeare wrote all those goddamn plays!

I have seen Rory Kinnear- the most versatile and talented actor on the English Stage- in five separate plays; I have seen him play the most excellent fool in The Man of Mode, I have seen him play the self-pitying wastrel son in The Philistines, I have seen him play the intense, disturbed and heart-broken anti-hero in The Revengers Tragedies, I have seen him play the piano and the trumpet in Burnt by the Sun and now I have seen him play sexually repressed creep. I am so turned on by talent. Rory is so hot!

I haven't been to the Almeida since 2004! I barely remembered it, me and Anna got great seats up in the circle and they were really cheap too, fifteen quid each, not bad for our yearly Rory-fix. This production was both funny and because of La AMM extremely serious! The supporting cast were great and got all the laughs, the set was not very innovative but I'm glad as it didn't detract from the words- that's what's important here, it's flipping Shakespeare!

But there's not enough Rory in this play, there's a lot of Ben Miles and a lot of Anna Maxwell Martin being so serious in this comedy that there are no laughs when she's on stage. The whole tone of the ending was changed simply because she was so straight, it was good though, realistic. There probably shouldn't be a silly happy ending after a play that's essentially about rape!

"And by the way Isabella while disguised as a priest I fell in love with you too! Let's get married!" STONY SILENCE Isabella gives a withering look, like fuck I'm going to marry you after all this shit! The Duke stands up awkwardly and changes the subject: "So... Let's all go back to the palace for a knees up!"

Twelfth Night (The Marlowe Society, Cambridge)

Anna visited for 24 hours and we fit in a Shakespeare Double Bill. We started with The Marlowe Society's production of Twelfth Night, a play that we both knew well from the 1996 movie starring Imogen Stubbs, but had never seen on stage. The Marlowe is the sort of acting-only version of the Cambridge Footlights, the guys on stage were all studying Oriental Sciences and whatnot, ie this was student theatre. But this was big-budget, amazing set, proper acting students. They were bloody good. Well, they were a bit blah to begin with as always with Shakespeare once you were into it it seemed to get better and better.

The concept was a little creepy though, they seemed to have taken the madness theme and decided to set it all in a flood-damaged sanitarium of some sort and because of this creepiness the whole tone of the ending changed and though it was funny throughout the ending was NOT funny, it was very unnerving. Bit it was still a comedy at heart, the bit that got the biggest laugh was when Orsino still could not tell the twins apart and professed love for Sebastian at the end. The visual gags and the staging was excellent AND the songs and dance were really good!

Josh Higgott as Sir Toby Belch, Patrick Walshe-McBride as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Oliver Soden as Malvolio performed excellent characters, Sebastian (Jack Monaghan) was also cute. I mention these student-actors because this company has a tendency to churn out future-fames, let's see if they make it.

All's Well that Ends Well (National Theatre)

It looked magical. Same Art Director in charge of War Horse methinks- silhouetted trees and torn paper all over the place. It was extremely pretty and the performances were all top-notch. I didn't know this Shakespeare, I knew it was supposed to be a comedy (in other words nobody dies) but by the end of the first act I didn't see how it could possibly End Well!! It did end well, I suppose, if being trapped in a loveless marriage means ending well!

The plot is that an orphan girl is in love with a young boy who is called up by the terminally ill King to join the army (which he is super excited about btw) the girl cures the King (her dad was a wizard or something) so to reward her the King marries her to the boy she loves- turns out though he's SO not interested, so he leaves for war hoping that she'll die! She wanders around for a bit, meets a pretty maid and hatches a scheme so that her husband will sleep with the pretty maid (who he totally fancies) but actually he'll be blindfolded and it will be HER! It ends with the husband coming back home to find that his wife is not dead but pregnant so he admits defeat and says "ok, I suppose I'll be your husband."

HORROR! This is not a happy ending!!

I felt so awful for the heroine! Because he was such a shit!! But I realise that in Shakespeare's day the audience reaction would have been the complete opposite! Because she was a tricky woman with lots of schemes! Scheming to be married to him, scheming to trick him into sleeping with her, scheming to trap him in a marriage!! So she would have been the scheming villain rather than him the shit who liked her but ugh, didn't want to marry her!

I guess I felt extra bad because I'm sort of fond of the old schemes myself. If I ever get me a husband it'll be by a scheme.

Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare's Globe on tour- Emmanuel College Gardens, Cambridge)

The Globe should stick to Shakespeare. This was the funniest thing I've seen for ages. A talented bunch of actors and musicians doing some really really good comedy with nothing but a couple of silly hats.

A nice first experience of outdoor theatre too; good weather (though thank god not as good as it had been all week or I would have died of sunstroke) and not too many ducks trying to get at the sandwiches.

Julius Caesar (RSC, The Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon)

Lucy Bailey has directed bloodbaths at the Globe before, I think if this production had been performed in the open air it would have been a lot better- obviously the actors would have to learn to shout for it to be outside, though really they should have learned this before they came a-mumbling onstage at The Courtyard.

Going down to Stratford for the night to see The RSC's production of Julius Caesar was luckily not the only thing on our agenda, so the fact that the play was not great did not ruin our road trip. We went to Warwick for ice cream and charity shops, then to Charlecote Park for a country house and deer-spotting, finally we got to our thirty quid travel lodge (tres cheap though almost deathly in the heat with windows that open an inch) out for a nice dinner and then to the theatre. The next day we went to Broadway and Chipping-Camden to see ye olde Cotswald villages and had the most fabulous lunch we'd had for years sitting in the sun outside Russell's and eating two courses for £12; minute steak and celariac with rocket and parmesan salad followed by treacle tart and ice cream- I could spend a whole flipping blog on how wonderful the lunch was and how nice the boys who worked there were, but I'm supposed to be reviewing a play. We also stopped at farm shops on the way home and listened to Just William -the previous day we'd prepared ourselves for Shakespeare with William and the Lost Tourist ("What's the Avon?") and William Takes the Stage ("The flesh and hairys...").

So I've raved on this blog before about how the Royal Shakespeare Company trains in a way that even if you don't know the play it is instantly accessible, it isn't a mish-mash of acting styles to confuse like American film-versions of Shakey, everyone acts the same way, to the same rhythm etc. Well, it seems the entire company of last summer's Hamlet, Love Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream are filming David Tennant's Hamlet for BBC2 to be shown at Christmas so this summer's company are as my sister put it "the dregs of the RSC" (or as my dad put it: "Anyone want to be in a play?" "Aye, I'll dae it, sae lang as I can be back at the chip shop for my night shift"). I still want to believe that it was because I didn't know it that I didn't enjoy it.

I was willing to look past the horrible 3D crowd projections and the strange choice of 1960s-Afternoon-Play music that intruded on every scene, and I didn't mind that some of the costumes were crap (Dad wondered why they were all dressed like Abba) I was convinced that the RSC would be able to act it and that was all I was interested in, a good story.

But is it a good story? Did Shakespeare even write it we wondered? He always writes such good parts for women, Caesar's wife was played by Noma Dumezweni who had played Titania so well last year in Midsummer- I was relieved to see her and thought "ho ho, it will be good now she's in it..." She had about two lines and was never seen again! Same with Portia, I was suddenly interested, thought with her we'd see another side to Brutus, but she died off stage after one scene and was only seen again as a ghost!! Had all of Shakespeare's boy-actors grown up when he wrote this play!? Why were there no women in it!?

It was a really hot day, so this affected the audience, hayfever and fatigue- I wondered if it was just that we'd done so much in the sun that day that I was tired and that was why in the first half hour of the play I couldn't keep my eyes open- anyway, the audience seemed to wait for dramatic pauses to cough loudly over the next lines so I didn't know what the fuck was going on. Back to the company though; it didn't help that they all seemed to be from a school of mumbling whisperers. Were they tired from the heat? Or were they just shit?

I felt like a lot of the time they were forgetting their lines! There were too many "dramatic pauses." There were only a couple of people who could really project and convey the frigging meaning of their lines, it wasn't that I was tired, suddenly someone new is speaking and I'm listening- I'm not drifting off.

The bloke who played Mark Anthony managed to make the "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." speech boring and utterly undramatic, he was creepy and slimy, is he supposed to be? There was no Fool! (another reason we're not sure Shakespeare wrote it) Though the actor playing Caesar cracked a few jokes he was mainly creepy and slimy- was he supposed to be?! I thought he was supposed to be charismatic and god-like!! Only Robin Hood's Sam Troughton playing the lead was any good, though really I thought Brutus was supposed to be complex, he seemed to be a total coward (so...Much but with more lines) and was good with the worried-face. I still had trouble hearing him though, was he adjusting how he spoke to soft spoken Cassius' level? Project!! Perhaps they thought Sam Troughton would carry their show, we got Doctor Who last year, why not get someone from Robin Hood this year? For a start, I really don't think Much is a big enough star to attract huge audiences and secondly everyone in Tennant's plays last year were equally as good as him, Julius Caesar is much more a company play, you need a good company.

This production got good reviews. And three stars from the Guardian which I thought was generous. The fighting scenes were good (obviously the director's forte) and Caesar's murder- the scenes where women were allowed to act were good too, but I found the actors playing Cassius and Mark Anthony just bla, and unfortunately they were two very important parts.

She's The Man (2006)

Twelfth Night is one of my favourite, if not my actual, definitive favourite, Shakespeare play. And Amanda Bynes- though I haven't seen much of her work (though, when I think about it I've seen at least five of her films, there can't be many more can there?!) is one of my favourite young Hollywood stars. And I'll tell you why I like Amanda Bynes; because she is in the tradition of screwball-romantic-comedy actresses that everyone loved in the 80s, it is my strong belief that Amanda has it in her to be the next Goldie Hawn. 

This is what we need folks! Who doesn't love Overboard or House-sitter?! So She's the Man wasn't great, but Amanda was!! She was brilliant, I can't believe I used to hate her face, now i love everything about it! She's so expressive and so good at being goofy. I think I realised how good she was when I saw her take a small supporting role in Hairspray, she didn't have many lines but she made that character so likeable and funny- is it just me who though so? Back to the film; rhe rest of the cast were awful- except the cliche gay friend (I think he was Horatio!) who didn't have enough screen time- the love interest was extremely wooden, there was no transformation there really, he didn't learn to talk to women he just settled for Amanda- which is great for her if a hot bod is enough and she can put up with nervous jittery conversation about different kinds of cheeses...

Anyway, it was all I expected it to be, it was a giggle. The most fun was probably trying to figure out who was supposed to be who, it is very loosely based on Twelfth Night, ie the names are the same in some cases and that's IT, but there were some surprises to see it did sort of stick to the plot and that the creep didn't end up getting with the bitch, they just both stayed humiliated. (I'm guessing Malvolio and maybe the Fool? Or was the Headmaster the Fool? I think he was. He was excellent.)

Hamlet (1996)

I saw Ken Bran's Hamlet the year I started secondary school, so by my amazing maths skills I saw this film the year it came out, and I loved it. My sister and I have a tradition of trying to watch Hamlet every summer all in one go (five+ hours, quite a feat). I bought her the dvd this Christmas and we watched it last week.

Anna and I saw the RSC's production of Hamlet in Stratford this summer- which of course starred David Tennant, who we had seen previously in Edinburgh in Look Back in Anger. I think the reason why this production was so successful (even without Tennant for most of last month) is that all the actors are RSC trained, they all speak the play the same way and so if you can understand one actor you can undesrtand them all, it is made completely accessible. Anna and I only noticed this when watching Kenny's Omelete last week, we drifted off at times and it only happened with certain actors. The cast of the 1996 Hamlet are from everywhere, so classically trained Kenneth Branagh and Nick Farrell are spellbinding yet when Jack Lemmon has a go (God bless him) it's strangely boring and flat and sometimes confusing. Billy Crystal and Charlton Heston play their parts amazingly well -before you accuse me of saying Americans cant do Shakespeare, Crystal I'd say was the most succesful of all the actors at making Shakespeare understandable- Yes it's a comic part but it's still written in the same way as all the others.

When I was younger and enjoyed this film I must have known the story so well and just ignored the parts where I zoned out, and just loved the whole spectacular sight of it. God, it's so well shot, it's beautiful! And the actors are so good, so many long long scenes all in one shot!

The film is famous for using the entire unabridged script but probably more famous for the odd assortment of stars from stage, hollywood and well, Ken Dodd... It was probably this film that sparked my obsession with actors, watching Hamlet is like star spotting, only last week did I notice Rosemary Harris as the Player Queen! Fab!

While I'm drooling over actors I might as well mention how gorgeous EVERYONE is in this film; Kenny B at his best, earned the nickname 'Girdle-legs' from Anna and I because he's just so effing thin! He must have just stopped eating, knowing that he had to look fabulous! Rufus Sewell strutting around as Fortinbras, Jesus, that man is handsome, Michael Maloney even looking passable (That must be a wig!) And my favourite Nicholas Farrell as a jumpy, probably gay Horatio. Obviously Kate Winslet and Julie Christie are lovely too, but they always are...

My friend Penny studies English and Drama and she has told me that all her teachers have told them that Kenneth Branagh is rubbish and he destroys Shakespeare. Kenneth Branagh is a wonderful actor and director who has brought Shakespeare to the masses! Those teachers are out of their minds. Until you've seen Kenny on stage you are not qualified to say anything. I finally saw him live in Ivanov last December. The story was mostly awful (sorry Chekhov, I'm slamming you again) but he was so good. You waited for him to be on stage! His depression, his breakdown, his tears, were so real! So disturbing! And he frequently breaks down in Hamlet! if you watch closely the parts where he goes from quiet, to mad, to agonising breakdown, to normality- he frequently does in one shot!! He is an amazing actor and this film is him at his absolute best.