The Complete Walk, from the comfort of your sofa #2

"I would you were as I would have you be"

Our journey along the Complete Walk, at our own speed and from the comfort of our own home, continues apace. Here's my thoughts on the first suite of films and now there's four more for your delectation.


Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night comes to us from Parham House, West Sussex, with the glorious Olivia Williams and Susannah Fielding playing Olivia and Viola/Cesario. And directed by Jessica Swale, it's deliciously exciting and erotic as the former is utterly thunderstruck by the latter, both actors hitting the mark perfectly and suggesting that this would be a production for the ages were it ever to happen in full. It is spliced with Tim Carroll's 2012 production which saw Mark Rylance reprise his Olivia, a performance of which, in all honesty, I was no real fan back then and remain so now.


Macbeth

Interestingly, this was the first of the films that felt heavier on the Globe production rather than the new clip. In the atmospheric gloom of Glamis Castle, Adele Thomas directs a forcefully weird Joanna Scanlan as the Porter but the majority of the action comes from Eve Best's 2013 production, (sadly not the Elliot Cowan-starring one from 2010) with Joseph Millson's beautifully spoken M and Samantha Spiro's vibrant Lady M. It was nice to see them again but the final result did thus feel a little unbalanced.


Pericles

Now this one was good. Sheila Reid's storytelling Gower, reprised from the Swanamaker production earlier this year, enhanced by wordless excerpts from the National Theatre of Greece's version from the Globe To Globe season and illustrated animation too, Dominic Dromgoole's direction took Reid all around the Globe complex and beautifully so.


The Tempest

One of the cushier jobs in this series, Douglas Hodge's achingly voiced Prospero finds himself marooned on Bermuda and shot gorgeously by Jessica Swale mostly in voiceover to beautiful effect, And it was nice to revisit Jeremy Herrin's Roger Allam-starring version for the Globe in 2013, even if I remain unconvinced by its Ferdinand and Miranda, a sterling combination of old and new.

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