The RSC's All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare (2023) -
The filming style was like something from a video I might have been forced to watch at school and the split screen moments made me think of the TV programmes that come with a sign language translator. The camerawork and occasional Widescreen moments all seemed a quite peculiar way to frame the story too.
The modern treatment also seemed inapt and the phone camera footage was a bit tacky, although I might have thought it more clever if I'd actually been in the theatre.
The drone was also a bit pants and I wasn't that sure about the night club bit either.
The army parts worked however, because the forces automatically carry a weight of a more serious nature and they were less out of place to The Bard, bearing in mind that the soldiers already featured in his original work.
I thought that the King was superb, played by Bruce Alexander, as was Bertram's Mother, The Countess played by Claire Benedict, but Simon Coates Playing Le Feu sometimes felt that he was just reciting words remembered, without that much feeling or skill.
The others all seemed to perform their roles as I would expect Shakespeare to be delivered. Projected without shouting and clearly concise to boot.
However, The Fool, Lavache (Will Edgerton) couldn't stand still and it was distracting to watch. Fortunately he was hardly in it and as such I thought that he wasn't really that necessary either.
Parolles (Jamie Wilkes) was over the top as well and stood out as odd amongst the rest of the cast, for his silliness, which may have been partly to do with his strange costume, that even once explained did not feel appropriate or needed. I felt that he should have been played more straight, because his comedy element was farcical, especially compared to everyone else. It lacked the usual subtlety found in these plays.
And while Bertram (Benjamin Westerby) was okay, I didn't think that he owned the stage as much as I believed the character should. Maybe that was to show him as the weak person his character appeared to be, but I just didn't think that the actor had enough charisma. I definitely couldn't see what they all saw in him.
This was a completely new story to me though. I haven't read or seen it before and I did appreciate the tales layout and narrative.
In some ways it was a reverse 'Taming Of The Shrew' with Helena's (Rosie Sheehy) attempts to snare a man, who was having none of it, but otherwise it worked as well as I might have expected from one of Will's plays.
It wasn't the best delivery in terms of production and I personally think that these recorded stage performances are better when they're done without an audience and filmed straight on.
They did use the space well, but I wasn't sure that the production in general was worthy of being filmed.
Others might have really appreciated the style and interpretation and may have been able to look past it, as a filmed piece to see the stagecraft, but I struggled to fully appreciate all of the elements, because the filming was not that straight on view of the stage and I felt that made me miss a lot of it. Perhaps it was the cameratography that let it down a bit?
However, as my first introduction to this particular story, I didn't mind it at all and my thoughts of turning it off, due to my initial judgement of its poor quality, soon waned and I watched it without any further consideration to end it prematurely. It did seem to bring out a need to write lots of long and wordy sentences though, like I think I'm clever or sumfink?
560.69/1000.
