Celebrations for an important family milestone – my partner Peter’s mother’s 70th birthday – prevented me from taking part in festivities around the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare on the day itself yesterday. But I’ve had fun catching up on some of it today.
The Globe’s Complete Walk was a fantastic cultural installation along the south bank of the Thames in London, a short walk from my flat. I always love strolling along the stretch of the river east from Blackfriars Bridge and what a bonus to be able to pause at regular intervals to catch great short films – 37 films, one for each of Shakespeare’s plays – until we reached the theatre itself, it’s imposing gates festooned with red and white roses.
Snippets of Hamlet, Henry V, As You Like It and Julius Caesar delivered by some of my favourite actors – including Alex Jennings, Michelle Terry, Ashley Zhangazha, Jamie Parker and Will Keen – is an enrichment to any Sunday. Why must it come down this weekend? Why not make it a permanent Bankside installation?
#RSCLive
My appetite fully whetted, I switched on BBC Iplayer to catch up on another massive group effort/marathon effort: last night’s broadcast of Shakespeare Live! From the RSC. If the Donmar Warehouse’s The Vote was the theatre televisual event of 2015, this must surely be the equivalent for 2016 if not the decade.
The Hamlet sequence – with Tim Minchin, Benedict Cumberbatch (or was it Eddie Redmayne?), Harriet Walter, Rory Kinnear, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench (“it is I, Hamlet the Dame”) and, ultimately, the Prince of Wales advising the RSC’s current Hamlet Paapa Essiedu on which word to emphasise in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy (hint: there’s no skull in this bit) – was hilariously sublime.
In the evening, hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate, reunited after their West End pairing in Much Ado About Nothing, other memorable highlights for me included, in no particular order: Rufus Wainwright’s sonnet set to music; Judi Dench’s Titania lusting after Al Murray’s Bottom; Henry Goodman and Rufus Hound’s gangster duo spivving their way through Cole Porter’s “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate, with very cheeky asides directed at Prince Charles and Camilla; spoofing with the Horrible Histories crew; and the event’s West Side Story opening number, performed by students of Arts Ed and the Urdang Academy (how excited must they have been?!).
As with the Globe films, it was also wonderful just to see so many great stage actors given such a major platform to display their classical craft. And there were some inspired RSC casting ideas, for which we must demand full-scale productions, including: real-life husband-and-wife Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Roger Allam as King Lear and Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Such major events by the likes of the RSC and Globe aside, I think, for me, the most effective means of marking #Shakespeare400 and showing, four centuries on, just how relevant the Bard remains – and another platform for a great actor – was care of BBC Newsnight. On Friday night’s programme, each story was preceded by a relevant Shakespeare quotation, powerfully performed by Akiya Henry (most recently seen onstage in Twelfth Night at the Globe). Fantastic.
I’m sure that Will would have approved. Happy Birthday, Shakespeare.
You can view Shakespeare Live! From the RSC on BBC iplayer here.
Terri Paddock founded WhatsOnStage.com and the WhatsOnStage Awards, running the company and its events from 1996 to 2013. Terri is also the author of two novels, Come Clean and Beware the Dwarfs, and has previously written for the Evening Standard, Independent, The Times and other national publications. She is renowned for her 'legendary' post-show Q&As and also produces the annual Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and acts as a digital, content strategy and event consultant for theatre, producers and other clients. She tweets about theatre at @TerriPaddock.
