FLASH FRIDAY: Best of the Bard

This week, in honor of our InDepth Interview series of articles on The Public Theater Shakespeare LAB production of TIMON OF ATHENS featuring Richard Thomas and Barry Edelstein, we are setting out to prove that all the world's a stage and we are, indeed, merely its players with a collection of clips featuring the work of William Shakespeare. Leonardo DiCaprio to Anthony Hopkins to Russell Brand; Ian McKellen & Judi Dench and more await with many marvelous visions for weary eyes and ears to behold and be bequeathed. TITUS, Romeo & Juliet, THE TEMPEST and MACBETH are merely a taste of the grand banquet!

W.S.: Broadway & Hollywood

Taking Shakespeare from stage and page to television and film is one of the most difficult types of adaptation of all, though the cinematic vistas and larger-than-life characters - plus, no doubt, the compelling structure and eloquent poetry of the plays - inspire new properties every year like the perpetual waves on the ocean of time itself. Just this Christmas we saw the release of Julie Taymor's visionary interpretation of THE TEMPEST featuring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren (as Prospera, in a gender reversal), Alfred Molina and others, though it failed to set the box office or critics' hearts alight. Taymor's previous Shakespeare adaptation, her first feature film, was the resoundingly successful and daringly artistically dangerous TITUS from TITUS ANDRONICUS, perhaps the bloodiest and most gruesome of all the Bard's violent - some, even, horrific; or out-and-out straight horror (like MACBETH) - tragedies. Stage directors certainly seem to be the most adept at translating the text and traversing the tricky territory of how far is too far and what will work with an audience and what will not when taking on a property from the Bard's pen. The most vivid and powerful film versions of Shakespeare's work seem to almost always come from a director with a very clear and precise vision for the piece - and with the means to carry it out. Whether that specific vision that will fruitfully lead to success on stage is setting the entire universe of the play in a vast black void with nary a prop beyond necessary weapons - I'm describing, of course, Trevor Nunn's blisteringly brilliant MACBETH starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench - or setting the romance and violence of Romeo & Juliet in a sort of post-apocalyptic Venice Beach with drag queens, Wall Street business and guns, as in Baz Luhrmann's revolutionary 1996 film. Taymor and Luhrmann take the cake for the most successful adaptations in recent memory - and when compared with films like Polanski's too-dark MACBETH and Zefferrelli's bland and boring Romeo & Juliet, along with the many disemboweled versions of the texts used in most of the "great" film adaptations, perhaps the modern era will reap the best Shakespeare on film yet. With productions like THE MERCHANT OF VENICE on Broadway starring Al Pacino and TIMON OF ATHENS at The Public Theater, the theatre scene is certainly doing amazing, new things with the greatest poetry ever written in the English language.

Just taking a look at the trailers and assorted clips and videos for Taymor, Luhrmann and Nunn's stunning Shakespeare films gives one a sense of the artistry, passion and joy imbued by the actors and very brave directors at the helms. Taymor and Luhrmann certainly deserve much applause for their idiosyncratically genius work on TITUS and William Shakespeare'S ROMEO + JULIET, respectively - far more than they received from critics at the time. If something speaks directly to one time it will speak to all times, just as Shakespeare's words live on four hundred years after they were first written and performed. So, too, can a film re-ignite the flame of the fiery soul within each masterful play.

William Shakespeare'S ROMEO + JULIET trailer

Next, we have the opening sequence of Luhtmann's film, with John Leguizamo proving to this very day with Ghetto Klown coming up on Broadway that he is a stage star who can set the screen alight like few others.

Here is one of the most stirring and luscious love songs in any film in recent memory, the simply stunning "Kissing You" which was so ideally used for Romeo and Juliet's first dance, sung in the film and on the soundtrack by Des'ree.

With a cast comprising many Oscar-winners and up-and-coming stars-on-the-rise, Julie Taymor's TITUS is a cornucopia of risky acting - too much ham or just enough? Over-the-top or over-the-moon? - and an even riskier directorial mise-en-scene that Taymor employs - and even pulls off (mostly). Sure, perhaps some of it goes a bit too far, but the dismemberment and cannibalism are written into the play. Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and more make this adaptation perhaps the best of the last decade or so since Kenneth Branagh's complete HAMLET and Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET. Featuring one of the most memorable film scores in the last ten years, by Taymor's husband Eliot Goldenthal, here is the trailer for TITUS.

Next, we have the spine-tingling trailer for Kenneth Branagh's complete-text version of HAMLET starring Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie and Kate Winslet, directed by and starring Branagh himself. What an event! Worth the many hour investment. No, no, really. It is. See if this inspires you.

For a completely different take on HAMLET, check out the 2000 modern-day HAMLET starring Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber. HAMLET has never been filled with quite this much late-century angst and sleek, cool, modern trappings - and Schreiber is a Laertes for the ages, no question. It is well worth checking out as a companion piece - or maybe even as a testing of the waters. Take a dip and then you might want to really jump in!

An unforgettable production onstage for any who saw it at the National Theatre in the mid-to-late 70s (at least by all reports), Trevor Nunn's MACBETH is one of those bare-bones productions that manages to fill the void with more than mere props or sets or lighting effects or elaborate costumes could ever do. The words do it all and the actions of the actors is all we need to see to experience everything intended by the author. Well, that and their oh-so-young faces. Baby-faced McKellen and delectable Dench - need I say more?

Because just one scene from that MACBETH would never, ever, ever be enough, this from Act I, Scene VII and features one of McKellen's most deliciously delivered monologues in a truly all-around inimitably perfect performance.

Speaking of the very best Shakespeare digital adaptations available, I would be remiss to not add my own personal favorite of them all: the New York Shakespeare Festival production of KING LEAR starring James Earl Jones & Raul Julia from 1974. It is worth owning the DVD for this scene - the terrifying confrontation in Act II - and Raul Julia's first scene, alone. This is among the very best of the best of the Bard as it has ever been rendered on video or film.

Lastly, for fun, check out Russell Brand improvising with Julie Taymor and Alfred Molina in rehearsal for THE TEMPEST.

As a bonus, here is the HD trailer for the actual 2010 film.

With all of these excellent adaptations to whet your palate, if you are in New York be sure to check out any of the many productions going on right now, none the least of which TIMON OF ATHENS at the Public and MERCHANT of VENICE on Broadway starring Al Pacino, now in its final week! How time flies - and we are but flies to the gods, after all. Right, Billy - wherever you are?

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