Post by flum on Aug 12, 2004 14:23:07 GMT
OK, so Shakespeare may be considered to be the greatest writer who has ever lived, but his work isn't exactly readable. Face it, he's no Stephen King. He's not even a Jeffery Archer, for that matter, and few people have ever read or gone to see one of his plays because they actually wanted to. This is why we, the Great British Public, need to be tricked into it and why all of his movies have a twist to lure in the punters; either setting it in Nazi Germany (Ian McKellan's Richard III), having people talk about it for no particular reason (Al Pacino's Looking for Richard) or making it about Jesus (Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Hamlet). Personally I'm quite gullible for these sorts of gimmicks which is why I toddled down to the Gilded Balloon to see the The Italian Job being performed using the works of Shakespeareand featuring some bloke who was in Cutting It.
It took me a few minutes to mentally get into the style of the tale, partly due to the unnaturalness of the language being used but mainly because GMTV's Jenni Falconer was sitting in the row in front of me which was quite distracting. Once you get over that, however, it's a pretty good show, but it's probably not worth seeing unless you either have a good knowledge of Shakespeare - which I don't - or The Italian Job - which I do. If you don't have that then it's just a bunch of people talking nonsense and arsing around in cod-pieces in front of 3 Mini Coopers.
It took me a few minutes to mentally get into the style of the tale, partly due to the unnaturalness of the language being used but mainly because GMTV's Jenni Falconer was sitting in the row in front of me which was quite distracting. Once you get over that, however, it's a pretty good show, but it's probably not worth seeing unless you either have a good knowledge of Shakespeare - which I don't - or The Italian Job - which I do. If you don't have that then it's just a bunch of people talking nonsense and arsing around in cod-pieces in front of 3 Mini Coopers.
