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The Essential Shakespeare Live
Royal Shakespeare Company and British Library
Two compact discs, 136 minutes
£15.99
Dateline: 27th October, 2005
While everyone else was listening to the new albums from Franz Ferdinand
and Nickelback on the Underground this morning, your intrepid reviewer
was eschewing The Killers and Mozart for other sublime delights. What
better on a crowded train than Lord Olivier, Dame Judi Dench and Sir
Derek Jacobi providing their hymn to the lyrics of that old Bopper,
William Shakespeare, with musical accompaniment from coughing and laughing
audiences?
In the past, if one wanted a Shakespearian fix, a secret session with
the Naxos version of William Walton's Henry V music provided
mellifluous delights from Anton Lesser and Michael Sheen.
Now, Bard addicts can enjoy 136 minutes of pure indulgence chosen by
Gregory Doran from Royal Shakespeare Company productions between 1959
and the present day.
Doran has set himself some private rules when choosing the twenty extracts.
With the exception of Henry V from which we get the prologue
and an excerpt, there are no two pieces from the same play nor are any
actors featured more than once.
Strangely, two obvious plays, Othello and Macbeth are
both excluded, possibly because the best exponents have already made
their mark elsewhere.
Despite the finest efforts of the "wizards at the British Library
Sound Archive" the quality is variable and in particular, the very
first extract, Laurence Olivier's 1959 Coriolanus for Peter Hall can
be quite difficult to listen to. There is a helping hand in the notes
which name each of the relevant directors and actors and also include
the text, if one wants or needs to follow it.
There are riches galore in this selection that many will wish to go
back to time after time. Everybody will have their favourites but Paul
Scofield's Lear and David Warner's Hamlet (To be or not to be)
early on, Patrick Stewart's Cassius and Antony Sher's Richard III are
amongst the best of the serious pieces.
Bill Alexander's Merry Wives of Windsor, complete with photo
of Janet Dale and Lindsey Duncan curlered under hairdryers, is an excellent
comic piece, as is the extract from Trevor Nunn's Comedy of Errors
featuring Roger Rees and Michael Williams.
The biggest delight for this listener though, was Donald Sinden's memorably
pompous Malvolio preparing to make a fool of himself in yellow stockings
and crossed garters.
The Essential Shakespeare Live could prove the Christmas gift
hit of the year for anybody in love with Shakespeare or the best actors
of the last fifty years. Unlike socks or cheap wine, this might also
be one of those much rarer gifts that you feel like giving to yourself
to brighten up your own holiday season.
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