Shakespeare Retold (2005)

(Amazon UK link)

Many years ago, at a charity fair, I bought a DVD called ‘Shakespeare retold’. We’ve quite enjoyed productions of Shakespeare plays over the years, both live ones, and adaptations on film, such as ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Midsummer night’s dream’; both those are set in the 19th century rather than the 16th, but otherwise are true to the originals, using the same text.

What we hadn’t realised is that this BBC series consists of modernised stories, based very loosely on Shakespeare’s originals. So there’s almost none of the 17th century dialogue, although names of some of the characters are the same or similar to those used by Shakespeare.

The first one we watched one evening when we wanted something reasonably light, and not too long. It’s based on the play ‘Much ado about nothing’, which neither of us was very familiar with. It’s set in a TV news studio, primarily. The main characters, as in Shakespeare’s original, are called Beatrice (Sarah Parish) and Benedick (Damian Lewis). They have some history, as is clear from a brief opening sequence, and the director has decided to reunite them on screen as news anchors after someone else loses his job. 

There’s some good chemistry between these two. Initially it’s barbed insults and repartee, cleverly done, until others of the cast decide to manipulate each one into thinking that the other is secretly in love with them. That, I gather, is the main focus of Shakespeare’s original, and I thought it cleverly done. The overhearing is done through headphones or TV screens. 

Meanwhile the director’s glamorous daughter and weather reporter Hero (Billie Piper) starts going out with Claude (Tom Ellis), much to the dismay of Don (Derek Riddell) who is in love with Hero himself. Again, a very Shakespearean storyline. When they decide to get married, Don decides to sabotage the wedding..

There are a lot of other characters, and some quite amusing misunderstandings. In Shakespeare’s version, people kept overhearing what others were saying (sometimes they were intended to). This adaptation does something similar quite cleverly, with people watching on screen, or hearing through the studio speakers. The general plot does follow a similar structure to the Shakespeare play, and we very much enjoyed this production. It’s all cleverly done, with plenty of ironic humour and a bit of tension towards the end. 

The second play on the first DVD is Macbeth, but I find Shakespeare’s tragedies quite disturbing, and discovered that this one was set in a kitchen, with some slightly gruesome scenes; so we decided to skip this.

So the next one we watched, a week or two later, was a modern adaptation of ‘The taming of the shrew’, a play which we had watched, live, a few years ago. In this modern version, Kate (Shirley Henderson) is a government minister, possibly in line to become the next prime minister. And she is very, very shrewish. We see her right at the start, becoming more and more angry with dramatic facial expressions, before slapping her aide (David Mitchell) in the face. Apparently he gave her some incorrect information. 

Kate has a sister, the model Bianca (Jaime Murray), who has a lot of admirers. Kate has never had a boyfriend, which is hardly surprising as she is so mean to everyone. Then an adventurer called Petruchio (Rufus Sewell) arrives, penniless, and says his only solution is to marry somebody rich. He doesn’t care how awful she is, and sets his sights on Kate. She has already been told that her ratings will soar if she marries someone, so she agrees. Then she has an unpleasant shock as they arrive at the church for the wedding. 

The ‘taming’ applies as much to him as it does to her, and I’m not sure I found it entirely believable. But Shakespeare tends to write caricatured stories, and there’s a lot in the original that is decidedly unpleasant. Overall, we thought this a good - if somewhat bizarre - adaptation. 

And finally we saw ‘A midsummer night’s dream’, a version which is much closer to the original than any of the others. It’s set in a holiday park, but there’s a wood where fairies live and cause mischief. The start, and a few sections throughout, are told as a monologue to the audience by Puck (Dean Lennox Kelly). 

The story opens with a middle-aged couple throwing a large party for their daughter Hermia (Zoe Tapper) who is getting engaged to James (William Ash). Then she runs off with Zander (Rupert Evans), leaving James crying and ranting to Hermia’s best friend Helena (Michelle Bonnard), who is secretly in love with James…

Meanwhile the king and queen of the fairies have fallen out, and the king asks Puck for some ‘love juice’ for his wife, and also for James. But, as in Shakespeare’s play, the wrong young man is dosed, leading to chaos and miscommunication. The queen falls in love with the unappealing comic known as Bottom (Johnny Vegas)... and eventually everything gets sorted out. 

We thought this adaptation was extremely well done, with a lot of humour as well as the many romantic threads. The actors are all believable; it might have been confusing had we not been familiar with the story, but as it was, we liked it very much. There are excellent performances, too, from Hermia’s parents (Bill Patterson and Imelda Staunton).

The scripts of all three plays were clever, the stories told well, and the music effective. I still don’t have any wish to see the Macbeth production; I don’t know they did three comedies and one tragedy. But I would rate the other three highly. 

One of the DVDs has some extras on it - mostly still images, but there are some short interviews which we watched. There’s one for each of the plays, and they give a brief introduction, and explain the thought processes behind the different settings. 

Definitely recommended, if you like this kind of thing.

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