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Jul. 7th, 2024 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsShakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent is a very entertaining ramble through Judi Dench's Thoughts On Shakespeare that both charmed me exceedingly and made me miss my opinionated friend Bill Redfield ....
The book is comprised of a series of interviews between Judi Dench and her friend and collaborator, Shakespearean director Brendan O'Hea, that iirc were originally meant to serve as master classes for up-and-coming actors. Each conversation centers on a play and a part, and walks through the role and the plot of the play in general, and then what Judi Dench's particular experiences have been in playing it.
This yields a lot of extremely entertaining plot summary, anecdotes and jokes -- Judi Dench presents herself as a bit of a chaos demon in terms of on-set behavior, I deeply enjoyed the [numerous!] stories of her accidentally pranking and shouting at total strangers that she'd accidentally mistaken for dear friends and I also enjoyed the stories about her and Kenneth Branagh getting kicked off-set for corpsing too hard -- although not a great deal of deeper Shakespearean analysis. Not infrequently O'Hea proposes an idea, interpretation or theme that Judi Dench just shoots down, as in this example about Measure for Measure:
Now I personally would have said you could act a theme, and that it might even be interesting to do so, to try to bring different things out in different iterations of the play; this is honestly one of the things I find most fun about Shakespeare, is that it's all been done so often that everyone is always trying to bring out different themes in interesting and compelling ways.
However, far be it from me to argue with Judi Dench, one of the greatest Shakespeareans of all time, who is clearly doing it much better than I ever will or can! And I do feel it's quite likely that the fact Judi Dench refuses to do this, that she's interested in the character as written on the page and just portrays that person as clearly and directly and with as much conviction as she can, is one of the things that makes her so good, while my friend Bill Redfield, who agonizes for pages and pages and pages about the themes and psychology of Hamlet as related to Guildenstern of all people, languishes forever in second tier. But Redfield's pages and pages worth of character meta are fun for me ....
The other thing that's very funny about Judi Dench is that she is the straightest woman in theater -- she clearly has many queer friends but, God bless, she would not notice a queer theme in Shakespeare if it jumped up and bit her on the nose. The chapter on Merchant of Venice is one of my favorite chapters even though Judi Dench does not like Merchant of Venice because you get to see her discover that Bassanio and Antonio's relationship might be a bit romantic in real time. Genuinely inspirational to learn that even the greatest and wisest among us can still learn things at any age.
The book is comprised of a series of interviews between Judi Dench and her friend and collaborator, Shakespearean director Brendan O'Hea, that iirc were originally meant to serve as master classes for up-and-coming actors. Each conversation centers on a play and a part, and walks through the role and the plot of the play in general, and then what Judi Dench's particular experiences have been in playing it.
This yields a lot of extremely entertaining plot summary, anecdotes and jokes -- Judi Dench presents herself as a bit of a chaos demon in terms of on-set behavior, I deeply enjoyed the [numerous!] stories of her accidentally pranking and shouting at total strangers that she'd accidentally mistaken for dear friends and I also enjoyed the stories about her and Kenneth Branagh getting kicked off-set for corpsing too hard -- although not a great deal of deeper Shakespearean analysis. Not infrequently O'Hea proposes an idea, interpretation or theme that Judi Dench just shoots down, as in this example about Measure for Measure:
O'HEA: It is sometimes said that Isabella and Angelo are two different sides of the same coin.
DENCH: Why? Course they're not. Who said that? It's ridiculous.
O'HEA: The name 'Angelo' means 'Messenger of God,' and Isabella means 'devoted to God.' They're both zealot-like in their thinking, they believe strongly in the rule of law, they both appear to have the same moral values, they're well-matched intellectually -- certainly if this scene is anything to go by.
DENCH: That may be, but saying that they are 'different sides of the same coin' isn't helpful to an actor. How do you play that? How does that help you in the scene?
O'HEA: Well, it doesn't really.
DENCH: It doesn't at all.
O'HEA: I suppose I'm thinking of themes and mirroring, and if I was writing an essay --
DENCH: Which you're not, you're acting, trying to bring a part to life. You can't act a theme.
Now I personally would have said you could act a theme, and that it might even be interesting to do so, to try to bring different things out in different iterations of the play; this is honestly one of the things I find most fun about Shakespeare, is that it's all been done so often that everyone is always trying to bring out different themes in interesting and compelling ways.
However, far be it from me to argue with Judi Dench, one of the greatest Shakespeareans of all time, who is clearly doing it much better than I ever will or can! And I do feel it's quite likely that the fact Judi Dench refuses to do this, that she's interested in the character as written on the page and just portrays that person as clearly and directly and with as much conviction as she can, is one of the things that makes her so good, while my friend Bill Redfield, who agonizes for pages and pages and pages about the themes and psychology of Hamlet as related to Guildenstern of all people, languishes forever in second tier. But Redfield's pages and pages worth of character meta are fun for me ....
The other thing that's very funny about Judi Dench is that she is the straightest woman in theater -- she clearly has many queer friends but, God bless, she would not notice a queer theme in Shakespeare if it jumped up and bit her on the nose. The chapter on Merchant of Venice is one of my favorite chapters even though Judi Dench does not like Merchant of Venice because you get to see her discover that Bassanio and Antonio's relationship might be a bit romantic in real time. Genuinely inspirational to learn that even the greatest and wisest among us can still learn things at any age.
