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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
It is not surprising that Shakespeare has been named as "the man of the millennium". He looms large in next year's theatrical calendar, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, predictably, at the top of the list. To commemorate the first two years of the new century the company is presenting the eight-play sequence of history plays.
This seems to me the symbol of a new nationalism emerging in the face of the Euro-tendency. Here we are, say the British, with our Shakespeare, challenging and daring. This is our millennial commitment: unrolling Shakespeare's history plays.
Putting aside the political message, let us get down to details. This is not the first time that the Royal Shakespeare Company has presented the history plays "en masse".
This time, according to what is published, there will be different directors for the plays. "There's an attractive riskiness about this and an aptness too," writes Paul Taylor in the Independent, "the change of vision reflecting the unpredictability".
But it is not only the Royal Shakespeare Company that is presenting Shakespeare. The Almeida Theatre is presenting Richard II and Coriolanus with Ralph Fiennes. The director is Jonathan Kent, who had previously directed Hamlet with Fiennes.
Shakespeare is still "the talk of the town" as it were. I caught a news item: "all the world is a website", said the writer, before revealing the Royal Shakespeare Company's decision to put the bard on the net. The plan will not take effect until the end of this year, but details were discussed in a conference that was held in Stratford-upon-Avon last week.
What the RSC aims at is to use the Internet to build up the new audiences that have come to Shakespeare as a result of films like Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love, with more Shakespeare's movies scheduled for production. This sounds like a revolution that may be opposed by Shakespearean diehards. One of the Senior Company's sources told the Independent: "We are exploring at the moment how to create the essence of live performance on the web. Productions should be interactive, people could opt in and out. It strikes us as a good way of getting the film audiences in. And it means our productions can be shared internationally."
The conference was attended by more than 100 British and American Shakespeare directors and theatre managers who debated how best to present the Bard's plays. The conference had the title "Shakespeare in the New Millennium" and was organised by the Shakespeare's Association of America and hosted by the RSC. What is really interesting and intriguing is the way the Americans are embracing British writers. There is even an American society for Laurence Durrell, the author of the Alexandria Quartet, whose reputation seems increasingly to be in decline in his homeland. And now there is this Shakespeare Association.
My last comment is about "to cut or not to cut", the title of an article cum interview in which Sir Peter Hall discusses some controversial issues. In the RSC international conference in Stratford the leading director called, in a speech, for the RSC to stop messing about with the Bard's words. He was vehemently opposed to any cuts in Shakespeare's plays. In his address, Sir Peter said that there was "no excuse for cutting Shakespeare's text when the plays were staged."
The majority of productions of Shakespeare do not cut the text, though some do, most notably a couple of recent performances at the increasingly popular Globe.
I, personally, tend to agree with Peter Hall. I do not believe in playing with the words of our predecessors or changing their opinions. Sometimes, though, boredom might creep in. Besides a number of the "sub-plots" in Shakespeare's plays can be eradicated with much less sufferings on our part. But this is a subject that needs discussion.
