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To: Henry Volquardsen who wrote (438)	7/6/1998 1:01:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1340

I love Brannagh- but I don't like some of his casting of minor characters in an attempt (I think) to pander to the American film going public. Jack Lemmon, for example, in Hamlet. AWFUL. Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing are my favorites. I watch those two movies several times a year. I love the last shot in Much Ado... a very long shot, where the whole cast winds around and out of the castle as flower petals fall on them. Really lovely. I did not appreciate the recent version of Richard. The actors were very very good, but I hate these new interpretations of things. I don't mind a new play based on the old (or a musical- like West Side Story- which didn't try to be Romeo and Juliet, it stands on its own merits. They used the language that fit in the mouths of the characters) but if you are going to use the words, and the whole structure, than to take it out of its time (the time the playwright intended- not necessarily the literal contextual time) is going to be jarring, and for me, unpleasant. I simply tried to imagine the whole of Richard back in the time where it belonged. After all, this is a HISTORICAL subject. Would we bring Julius Caeser to Nazi Germany? And if we would, WHY would we????? Julius Caeser is Julius Caeser. If people want to do plays about Hitler- DO plays about HITLER- but don't turn Shakespeare into a muddle to do it. I felt the same way when they did the Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth with set designs supposed to give the feel of the industrial revolution. I think it was supposed to compare man's struggle with machines as akin to the turmoil in the ring, but I found it to be depressing and distracting. The Ring to me is a glorious celebration of a very particular Myth, and to make it something else drains the beauty from it. I never did see the DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet- I knew I would hate it.