2016 Directed by Gregory Doran, Robin Mason …
From the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, David Tennant, Catherine Tate and guests mark the life of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of the playwright's death.
David Tennant Catherine Tate Judi Dench Benedict Cumberbatch Joseph Fiennes Ian McKellen David Suchet Helen Mirren Kingslee ‘Akala’ Daley Richard Atwill Simon Russell Beale Emma Carrington Richard David-Caine Anne-Marie Duff Paapa Essiedu Mariah Gale Henry Goodman Jalaal Hartley Alex Hassell Rufus Hound Natey Jones Rory Kinnear John Lithgow Rhian Lois Nitin Sawhney Nicholas Lumley Al Murray Alison Moyet Tim Minchin Show All…
UK
UK
It was a lot of fun. The editing was pretty wonky and some of the performances were better than others but was all around an enjoyable event.
Stand out performances:
- Our lovely hosts: Catherine Tate and David Tennent
- Alison Moyet's performance and composition of "Sign No More Ladies" from Much Ado About Nothing
- John Lithgow as Feste in a scene from Twelfth Night
- A Jazz Orchestra playing "Such Sweet Thunder" a piece composed by Duke Ellington which led into another Duke Ellington piece: "Black and Tan Fantasy". This second performance was accompanied by two Birmingham Royal Ballet members, Elisha Willis and Tyrone Singleton, as they presented a ballet piece entitled "Othello and Desdemona".
- "When I…
A celebration of the Bard on the 400th anniversary of his death, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and a gallery of celebrity guests at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 2016.
This is Shakespeare as a live variety show, with selections from the plays interspersed with musical adaptations and a comedy sketch or two. They are mostly well-executed and entertaining, though the whole thing runs a bit long. There are famous scenes, delivered by members of the RSC pantheon (Dench, McKellen, Beale) and by some lesser-known actors. Alex Hassell does a good job as a befuddled Henry V, for instance. The musical segments range across genres from opera to jazz to hip hop. The cuts away from the live scenes to four…
I can't really add much here, as Loureview's excellent review says it all (I'm in total agreement) Highlights for me were the showstopping The Nine Hamlets, Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff's performance of Macbeth's Act Two, Scene Two (because I love Macbeth) Ian McKellen's delivery of a stirring Sir Thomas More speech - extremely topical now we consider the refugee crisis; and if only those listed here who voted 'aye' this week had listened and found some humanity within them - and Akala's hip hop Shakespeare, scored by Nitin Sawhney. Shame they couldn't have selected better hosts than David Tennant (who was sort of OK I guess) and Catherine Tate (who was borderline passable) but that's a minor niggle for what was quite a spectacle.
Watched for the Shakespeare 400 anniversary yesterday, this live stage production was shown on television and relayed live to cinemas, and although it had an uneven start with a tuneless and slow-paced performance of "Tonight" from 'West Side Story', it picked up to mix speeches, ballet, opera, jazz, hip-hop and comedy to show how Shakespeare's plays have made inroads deep into popular culture over the past five decades in particular.
Despite a number of young performers appearing to contribute to scenes, it was the old veterans like Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen who effortlessly stole the show, and Roger Allam's Lear, Rory Kinnear and Ann-Marie Duff's Macbeths, and Simon Russell Beale's filmed extract from the 'sceptred isle' speech…
Imagine how much more iconic this would've been if they had let David Tennant and Catherine Tate do the bit from Much Ado About Nothing
It's alright, but it feels very pre-Tr*mp in its assumption that settling for mostly white folks upholding the Shakes-us quo (thanks, here all week) is enough. The best of them is probably (to my taste) Anne-Marie Duff and Rory Kinnear.
Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar are great, but feel under-used, and Paapa Essiedu's Hamlet is annoyingly left a bit adrift by the sketch that interrupts him. If he'd 'given up' and come back later, I think he would have had the deserved space for his great performance to land.
Weird pacing, feels like the focus was on making it good for TV/cinema over the live experience, which I think was the wrong choice.
Make sure you watch Much Ado About Nothing 2022 while it's on iPlayer!!
