On watching Shakespeare

1/ The more Shakespeare I watch, the more convinced I am that it’s essential to both read and watch Shakespeare. 

Read, to savour the poetry and have our own interpretations. Watch, to see different interpretations and approaches and perhaps gain a deeper understanding of the plays. 

For instance, the Ian McKellen – Judi Dench production shaped my interpretation of the Macbeths. The Winter’s Tale I have always loved, but I didn’t quite see the point of Autolycus and thought the play lacked harmony until watching the Antony Sher production (with Ian Hughes playing Autolycus). The Taming of the Shrew appears misogynistic when performed as serious drama like the BBC production with John Cleese, but it is a romp when the ACT goes for commedia dell’arte and casts Marc Singer and Fredi Olster, a great match in wit, energy, and magnetism (also, Marc Singer is hot). And so on. 

2/ One fun thing about watching different productions is that you can enjoy different aspects of them. 

Not counting Ran and the Kozintsev film, I have seen 5 different versions of King Lear: he Michael Buffong production from 2016 (ft. Don Warrington), the Jonathan Miller one from 1982 for the BBC (ft. Michael Hordern), the Michael Elliott one from 1982 (ft. Laurence Olivier), the 1971 Peter Brook film (ft. Paul Scofield), and the Jonathan Munby one from 2018 (ft. Ian McKellen). 

Don Warrington, Michael Hordern, and Ian McKellen are all wonderful as Lear.

The best Goneril? Rakie Ayola (2016). 

The best Regan? Diana Rigg (1983). 

The best Edgar? Anton Lesser (1982). 

The best Edmund? Robert Lindsay (1983). 

The best Fool? Miltos Yerolemou (2016). 

The best Cordelia? Brenda Blethyn (1982). 

The best Oswald? Thomas Coombes (2016). 

In the 2018 production, next to the magnificent Ian McKellen, the cast is lacklustre and uninspired, but I like that Kirsty Bushell does something different—she explicitly portrays Regan as sexually aroused by violence. 

3/ You know what, now that I have seen 4 different productions of Othello and see 3 very different but all brilliant Iagos (Ian McKellen, Bob Hoskins, and Rory Kinnear), I would say that Shakespeare doesn’t need to be updated or subverted or made “accessible to modern audiences”. Race-bending or gender-swapping is not necessarily a problem: Don Warrington and David Oyelowo are excellent as Lear and Coriolanus respectively, the productions respect the texts and don’t make a point about the actors being black; an Othello in which Othello is white and the rest is black is an interesting idea; an Othello in which Iago is black also sounds like an interesting idea, as it brings the two characters closer to each other and the plot even more disturbing… But too often, you can tell the directors make certain choices only for the sake of being “modern” or “bold” or “subversive”, you can tell they do certain things because they want to be “inclusive” or impose their ideology or make a political statement, you can tell they have no respect for and most likely no deep understanding of Shakespeare. 

Take the upcoming production of Cymbeline at the Globe: Imogen is now black, Cymbeline is turned into a black woman, Posthumus becomes an Arab woman—what’s the point?—you can tell there’s no thinking behind this, nothing but an urge to be “subversive” and to mess with the play, something irritating enough with oft-performed plays and much worse with a lesser-known work such as Cymbeline.

4/ Some theatre people seem to think they need to “update” Shakespeare, they need to change the race or swap the gender or add sign language or bring in deaf actors or cut half the text or add some hip hop or just do anything different, because a straight production would be boring and say nothing new. But that’s wrong! There’s nothing like the pleasure of watching a great, serious Shakespeare production, like the David Oyelowo Coriolanus or the Adrian Lester Othello. It’s exhilarating! And we cannot assume that everyone knows the plays and has all seen straight productions before—some people’s first encounter with Shakespeare may be a production that messes with Shakespeare and it ruins the play for them.  

5/ Having expected the 2022 Othello (ft. Giles Terera) to be bad, I watched a few important scenes in it, out of morbid curiosity perhaps, and it’s so much worse than I thought. From the beginning, when images of past productions of Othello are projected onto the stage (with Orson Welles, Anthony Hopkins, etc. in blackface), you can tell that the director Clint Dyer’s only interested in making a political statement. Giles Terera as Othello and Paul Hilton as Iago are both awful—it’s the most amateurish, laughable Shakespeare production I have ever seen—in the murder scene for instance, Giles Tererea and Rosy McEwen (as Desdemona) both stood there speaking their lines, like two awkward amateurs not knowing what to do with their bodies, that I couldn’t care less when that Desdemona was getting killed. 

Shocking. 

And that is why, folks, we must read the plays—don’t judge Shakespeare by modern productions.