Sunday Shakespeare Goodness--Helen Mirren's TEMPEST for free

I've seen a lot of productions of Shakespeare's The Tempest. I've seen a Comnedia dell'arte production iperformed solely n Italian during the a cultural "Olympics" that accompanied the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics, I've seen a production in San Diego with three oversized seashells as the only set (Ellis Rabb played Prospero) and I've seen two more traditional versions, one with Anthony Hopkins and Stephanie Zimbalist and one with Christopher Plummer as the vengeful mage.

When I found out Helen Mirren was going to do a female version of the play with Julie (The Lion King) Taymor directing, I was intrigued but somehow I never managed to catch the 2010 production. But now, thanks to YouTube, I can see the whole movie for free! It was worth the wait. Djimon Hounsou plays Caliban, who has the best line in the play (and one of my favorite lines in all of Shakespeare) when he says, "You taught me language and my profit on't is I know how to curse." 
This was Shakespeare's last play, the culmination of a career, a master at the top of his game.
Enjoy it here.

Blogging Shakespeare--All Shakespeare, all the time

One of the things I love about the Internet is that even if your interests are really fringe, you can find your tribe. So if you're  a  shakespeare geek (which really isn't that weird) who wants to talk about different productions of a favorite play--say, The Tempest--you can always go online to find someone who has an opinion about the Ellis Rabb staging of the play in San Diego versus the Stratford festival version with Christopher Plummer as Prospero. And somewhere out there is someone else who saw the L.A. production of the play starring Anthony Hopkins, Stephanie Zembalist, and Ken Marshall, who was then hot thanks to a television miniseries on Marco Polo.

In 20111, the Education Portal has a great list of Top Ten Shakespeare blogs here. The list begins with Blogging Shakespeare (run by the people at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) and is rounded out by the Bard Box, a collection of online Shakespeare videos. Bard Box shuttered a couple of years ago but the site is still up and many of the links work. If nothing else, it's a great place to start looking for online videos. (Last year I stumbled across an online posting of a Hamlet production with a young, unknown Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Laertes. He was just coming into his prime when he died, the age of all Shakespeare's really great parts for middle-aged men.  And we'll never get to see him perform them, damn it. But I digress.

I'm just a Shakespeare geek wannabe compared to the bloggers who post all Shakespeare all the time. Check them out!  And while you're at Shakespeare geek, check out some of their t-shirts, like the one pictured, 'It's all fun and games until somebody captures Gloucester and puts his eyes out."

A Tempest in a Multi-plex

Christopher Plummer conjures a tempest

I have a friend who has season's tickets to a series of filmed entertainments (concerts, plays, operas) running one and two-night only at the local multiplex. Last night he treated me to a filmed performance of The Tempest staged by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival with Christopher Plummer as Prospero.  I don't know if this is a one-time only thing (the Festival's site notes that the movie will be playing on June 14, and no other dates) but if you love Shakespeare, you owe it to yourself to hunt this production down.
The Tempest is my favorite of Shakespeare's plays. I love the spectacle of it--the sea storm, the fanciful interpretations of Ariel and Caliban, the fabulous language. "You really  like this play don't you?" my friend said, which was my first clue I was saying some of the lines out loud along with the actors.
Christopher Plummer is the best Prospero I've ever seen and I've seen some Prosperos. Anthony Hopkins played the role here in L.A. opposite Stephanie Zimbalist as Miranda. Ellis Rabb starred in a production he also directed at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. The set, I remember, was a beach with several huge seashells scattered about. Rabb played the magician in a very patrician manner that was interesting but not engaging. Plummer's performance was ... magical. 

Soelistyo and Plummer plot

I was a little leery of the idea of a filmed play--I've seen some really static ones. And in the opening storm sequence, the sound was really muffled and muddy, which made my heart sink. But once everyone was on the island, those technical issues faded away. And let's just say, filming a play has come a long way since the days my father was recording that production of The Fantasticks from half a mile away in a school gymnasium.
The Tempest was part of the Stratford's season a few years ago (I think Plummer did King Lear last year) and I've always wanted to  go up there for a week and see as many productions as I can. This season they're doing Henry V, everybody's favorite history play, Much Ado About Nothing (my favorite comedy) and Cymbeline, which I can't even remember, although I know I read it.
This version of The Tempest was directed by Des McAnuff.
I really liked McAnuff's conception of Ariel. The tricksy spirit was played by tiny (4'10") Julyana Soelistyo  whose naughty giggle was a reminder that spirits aren't human and find different things funny. (McAnuff definitely played up the humor in the text and made the most of the subplot involving Caliban and the two comic drunkards, Trinculo and Stephano.)
Geraint Wyn Davies played Stephano and he was so hilarious I wish I'd seen him playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream when it played in rep. If you caught his turn as  pompous Shakespearean actor Henry Breedlove on the wonderful show Slings and Arrows, you have some idea of what he can do.  The man was born to speak Shakespeare and not everyone in the company was up to his and Plummer's level. (The young woman playing Miranda, for instance, sounded like she'd learned her lines phonetically at times.)
I haven't seen the Julie Taymore version of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren, but now I have to go track it down. Because really, can you think of a better way to spend a few hours?