Shakespeare On Stage and Off by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2019-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

LIVING WITH SHAKESPEARE

11

NUTSHELLS AND OPEN TRIALS

Editing and Cinematography in Live Broadcast Shakespeare

R.W. JONES

A funny thing happened when I attended the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recorded live performance of Much Ado About Nothing, billed as Love’s Labour’s Won, at a hip movie house in Austin, Texas, thousands of miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. In Act 2, Scene 3, Benedick “overhears” Leonato, Don Pedro, and Claudio stage their discussion of Beatrice’s love for him. The scene invariably invites a multitude of sight gags, and this production proved no exception, with Benedick popping through curtains, accidentally appearing in plain sight, and ultimately ensconcing himself within a large, fully trimmed Christmas tree. The increasing absurdity of each appearance kept the laughs rolling in the RSC’S theatre, with the bit culminating in Benedick’s face replacing the centre of the Christmas tree star, electrocuting the credulous bachelor in the process. This climax provoked the largest laugh of all and lent revelatory force to the line “He does show some sparks that are like wit” (Shakespeare 2006, 2.3.181–2). Yet when the same sequence screened for the film audience within the packed Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, that uproarious sequence was no longer that uproarious and merited only some light chuckles. Even granting the received notion that live performances generate more laughter than taped ones, the disparity was startling. We were still a community of laughers after all, and other moments had gotten laughter from both crowds – why not this one?

The answer, I believe, resides in cinematography and editing, and their relationship to space, time, and audience expectation. I will return to this specific moment later. For now, I will examine the camera work of two of the most popular and publicized live theatre broadcasts in recent years – National Theatre (NT) Live’s Hamlet and the Branagh Theatre Company’s The Winter’s Tale.

The Lyndsey Turner–directed Hamlet owes much of its visibility and market power (the show sold out a year in advance) to its lead, Benedict Cumberbatch, who earned a passionate and wide following for his titular role in TV’S Sherlock. As he has gone on to star in both Hollywood blockbusters and prestige films alike, viewers have had little chance to miss him on-screen, and it seems that even casual admirers flocked to their local movie theatre to witness his stage rendering of the Prince of Denmark. According to the National Theatre, 800,000 people had seen the broadcast as of early 2017 (a record for NT Live), and further encore screenings occurred in fall 2017 and spring 2018, with another round slated for spring 2019. The production itself received mostly positive reviews, with general approval for Cumberbatch’s “rational” Hamlet, but critics diverged on Turner’s spectacular visual and sound effects and Es Devlin’s elaborate set, which bordered on the baroque. Some found this grand design exhilarating and politically trenchant; others saw clutter and obtrusiveness. And though Cumberbatch exhorted his fans to refrain from snapping photos or recording his performance with their phones, the production unmistakably laid its focus on its magnetic star, both courting this impassioned obsession and trying to manage its impolitic expression.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.