I was very strongly recommended to watch Ian McKellen’s Richard III after I had read the script and listened to the Arkangel version. Well, you were right. It is an extraordinary tour de force, set in a grazingly Fascist Britain of the 1930s (so echoed in more recent books by Christopher Priest and ). McKellen himself is superb; the other actors include Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr, Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Adrian Dunbar and Tim McInnerny, all excellent. McKellen explains on his own website how and why he judiciously pruned characters and plot to turn it into his own film version. Standout scenes include Richard’s nightmares before the final battle; Nigel Hawthorne’s melancholy reflections as the doomed Clarence; the exchange where Buckingham (Jim Broadbent) persuades the pseudo-reluctant Richard to take the crown. A really good film.
Oddly enough over the last few days I had also been listening to a completely different presentation of the story of Richard III, the Big Finish audio play The Kingmaker, written by Nev Fountain of the TV comedy show Dead Ringers. This brings the Fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison, back to the 1480s to find out what really happened to the Princes in the Tower, after a heated drunken argument with William Shakespeare. As you would expect from a production with that author and numerous comedians in the cast, it is utterly hilarious, totally subverting the expectations of the listener – are the Princes really robots? Who is the bearded time-traveller advising Richard of Gloucester? What of the true identity of the barmaids? Some might possibly think it just a bit silly, but I really enjoyed it.
Henry VI, Part I | Henry VI, Part II | Henry VI, Part III | Richard III / Richard III | Comedy of Errors | Titus Andronicus | Taming of the Shrew | Two Gentlemen of Verona | Love’s Labour’s Lost | Romeo and Juliet | Richard II / Richard II | A Midsummer Night’s Dream | King John | The Merchant of Venice | Henry IV, Part 1 / Henry IV, Part I | Henry IV, Part II | Henry V | Julius Caesar | Much Ado About Nothing | As You Like It | Merry Wives of Windsor | Hamlet / Hamlet | Twelfth Night | Troilus and Cressida | All’s Well That Ends Well | Measure for Measure | Othello | King Lear | Macbeth | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus / Coriolanus | Timon of Athens | Pericles | Cymbeline | The Winter’s Tale / The Winter’s Tale | The Tempest | Henry VIII | The Two Noble Kinsmen | Edward III | Sir Thomas More (fragment) | Double Falshood/Cardenio
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