Cymbeline

The BBC Shakespeare series often posed a problem - low budgets, stage-bound performances, odd camera-work, leaden pace - but this version of Cymbeline, one of my favourites of Shakespeare's lesser known plays, is not that bad.

Certainly it suffers from the same low budget and lack of location work, but it manages to transcend this with a largely excellent cast. Richard Johnson and Michael Gough, Claire Bloom and Helen Mirren, Paul Jesson and Graham Crowden, especially, keep the verse moving and get truly inside their characters. Mirren is heartbreaking as Imogen, with her husband exiled, and herself assuming a new identity in the wild when her life is in danger.

Some scenes work less well than others - the dream of Posthumous when he sees father, mother, and Jupiter (the scene gives Marius Goring and Michael Hordern a chance to shine, but it is preposterous), and the final scene's poor acting from Michael Pennington - usually reliable he goes too OTT here. But the scene with Imogen and the corpse she thinks is her husband ... and the mock-seduction scene with her asleep and Iachimo in wicked mode (Robert Lindsey, not that believable in much of this play but good in this scene).

This Cymbeline is good, mainly because it is really the only time the difficult play has been put on the screen. Within the BBC series it is one of the better ones, not too stagy, not too bland.

And the musical arrangement of 'Fear no more the heat o'the sun' is beautiful.

This play was first staged in the early 1600s and inevitably it has lost something in transportation through time and space to a BBCTV studio. The atmosphere doesn't feel right even though the costumes and sets are not bad. As for the plot, King Cymbeline (Richard Johnson) is not a happy bunny when his daughter Imogen (Helen Mirren) marries beneath her station. He banishes the husband from the kingdom and puts Imogen under the wing of her treacherous stepmother (Claire Bloom). From there the story takes many twists and turns. Robert Lindsay puts in a fine performance as a baddie, and it's nice to see Michael Gough, Patricia Hayes, Marius Goring and Michael Hordern popping up here and there. The play is not one of Shakespeare's greatest hits though, and this 1980s TV version only just held my attention; it seemed dull in parts.

I really was far from gripped by this; I must admit that I was watching it in my faculty library, for study purposes - but that does not rule me out of having a fair opinion on this production's merits.

This is one of the BBC Shakespeare Series, made in the late 1970s and early 1980s largely; 'twas a series that often lacked the necessary budgets to create any visual impact whatsoever. For instance, compare Orson Welles' filming of the Shrewsbury Battle to the pathetic, barely conveyed at all BBC sequence at the end of "Henry IV, Part I"... Really, these adaptations do not measure up (I admit I have not seen all of them, so I am not necessarily speaking about every one) to the many intriguing cinematic envisionings of Shakespeare, and indeed this "Cymbeline" simply does not make use of its television medium.

The cast is solid, but uninspired; Helen Mirren, for example, very forgettable in the crucial lead female role. Many barely try to rise above the bare-minimum mediocrity of the production. Some of the costumes are 'nice' I guess - a conscious attempt to place the action in the early C17 - but Moshinsky's direction is pretty non-existent. The action is, however, presented without any zest, slant or variation; this basically seems far too much of a filmed stage-play, although it is of course supposed to be a 'television adaptation'. Some actors acquit themselves adroitly - the irreproachable Robert Lindsay perfect as the silvery jackanapes Iachimo - and most of an experienced, familiar cast are tidy, but fail to add much to their roles: Michael Gough ('Horror Hospital', 'Satan's Slave'), Marius Goring ('A Matter of Life and Death' indeed!), Graham Crowden ('The Company of Wolves', Old Jock in 'A Very Peculiar Practice' and a thumping hiss-the-melodrama-villain turn as Soldeed in "Dr Who"'s 'The Horns of Nimon'), John Kane, Hugh Thomas (inscrutably bespectacled here) and the grand old Michael Hordern in a cameo as Jupiter.

Really, this is a competent but undeniably dull near-three hours to trudge through. One of the most curious of Shakespeare's plays is barely adapted; is it a history, a romance, a drama? A problem play...? The director is palpably at a loss as to define the material in his terms. It would take a rather more dynamic and thought through adaptation to bring something more out of the play. As it is, I was left un-enthused and unimpressed with this production, and by extension a play that seems a poor relation of the genuinely fascinating problem-comedies.

The BBC's intention is to put Shakespeare's plays on the screen, not to 'improve' them. Certainly I could argue that a little adaptation here or there, a few edits impossible on stage, and armies fighting out battles in outside locations would make the thing more enjoyable, but it really would be wrong for the BBC to have done this, even if they could afford to. What we have here is what Shakespeare wrote and we see it as he intended, with the limitations but also the opportunities for imaginative descriptions for an actor to get his teeth into. 'Cymbaline' is too long a play and relies as often is the case in Shakespeare on luck, mix-ups and quickness to mistrust. Unfortunately it does it rather lumberingly at times. And how anyone could mistake Helen Mirren for a boy, let alone her own father not recognise her is dodgy enough; the BBC could at least have disguised her a little more! Overall the production was good, with the performances of Mirren and Gough and Jesson particularly working for me. I thought Lindsay good enough, but Pennington sadly subdued on all but a few occasions. In short, a play I'm not fond of was done almost as well as I could imagine it being done.

'Cymbeline' is one of the lesser known Shakespeare plays and that is evident in a very scant available video/DVD competition of film and stage productions. It is a shame, because while it is nowhere near among Shakespeare's best it does deserve to be performed more and it is more down to being difficult to stage, with one of Shakespeare's most complicated (sometimes over-complicated) plots, rather than the play's quality.

Although the BBC Television Shakespeare is not a series where all the productions of all of Shakespeare's plays, its interest point and one of the main reasons to check the productions out (especially when in a few of the plays the production in question is the only one available), are consistently great, for me a vast majority of the productions are well done to excellent. Found this production of 'Cymbeline' to be very good and despite the play being one of Shakespeare's lesser known the production is one of the better ones of the series. It's one of the more consistently and better cast productions, in a good way, and is one of the more visually striking. Personally did not find it dull, even if not every scene works.

Will start with what didn't quite work. Do agree that the Posthumous dream sequence was clumsily done and spoiled by unintentional silliness and also that there was some occasional strange editing.

Michael Pennington tries too hard as Posthumous and it comes over as very over-the-top and wild, especially at the end, and Robert Lindsay doesn't look as though he is having much fun and struggles being sinister and cunning as the Iago of the play Iachimo.

There is so much that works though. Although not exactly authentic to Shakespearean period, the production is still a treat visually and it feels coherent. A lot of work went into the sets and that is obvious, like a previous reviewer the mountain snow set really caught my eyes in a good way. Elijah Moshinsky returns to form here after disappointing so badly in the series' production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (one of its weakest). A couple of missteps here and there, especially the dream sequence mentioned above, but he does make the drama gripping, with the drama being genuinely poignant and the conflict has enough tension.

Furthermore, the rendition of "Fear No More" is absolutely beautiful and brought me to tears. It helps that it is a beautiful song with aching text already, but it is even more special when it's performed well. Shakespeare's writing still shines brightly. Excepting Pennington and Lindsay, the cast are more than strong and still stand by my thoughts of it being one of the better cast productions of the BBC Television Shakespeare series. Helen Mirren is a heart-wrenching Imogen, and that quality is matched particularly in the sensitive turn of Michael Gough. Richard Johnson is suitably cantankerous in the title role and Claire Bloom chills the blood as the queen in another one of the production's standout performances. John Kane and Paul Jesson are very good in their roles here, particularly Jesson, and Michael Hordern is luxury casting as Jupiter.

In conclusion, very good production of an in my mind undeservedly lesser known play. 8/10