Aisling Gheal - the Hollow Crown and Twitter.

The Power of Twitter

Is it possible to mention Ken Tynan and AA Gill in the same breath? When looking for someone with an honest and intelligent appraisal of the modern equivalent of the stage – the television – then yes. Gill would be loved if he were left leaning , but he has been pushed into his idiosyncratic slightly barking British eccentric corner by politically correct alternative comedians (mainly due to his friendship with Jeremy Clarkson) and the chattering classes.

 The point is  -  Gill made some perceptive comments about the new TV adaptation of the Bards History plays  - and what’s more he liked them. But last night a terrible thing happened – it is something I do but keep quiet about. Like all great Shakespearian tragedy the seed of doubt is sewn and we watch it grow – to its conclusion. Aisling Gheal watching the Hollow Crown, Henry V, saw the seed of a bad production which grew in front of her – and she Tweeted her observations – and others saw what she had seen and contributed to the Tweet – feed massacre.

I have to say that I started to do the same last week! That gate is modern! Look at that fire in the middle of the room – it wouldn’t be like that! Where will the smoke go and everything is so clean – unsmoked. Is that the house at Weald and Downland museum?

The point is that ‘doing’ Shakespeare in a  ‘naturalistic’ way is always dangerous. Less is more. ‘Doing’ Shakespeare in a Shakespeare way is always dangerous. Actors seem to become a little more unstable in the presence of the Bards words  - which of course are bettered by their saying of them. Actors must see Will was having quite ago at them in the rehearsal of the mechanicals play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Actors acting Shakespeare are like a BBC radio policeman – they all sound the same.

Some one Tweeting suggested that the Ken Branagh and Emma Thompson’s film of Henry V could never be bettered.  Ken, now Sir Ken, started his Shakespearian acting by being a very good copy of Olivier  with all the same mannerisms and enunciation. But he grew up and moved on – with Brian Blessed and Judy Dench – to some very odd actor centred productions – which left the Bards words mightily skewed at the expense of a luvvie performance. He then found that the Bards words were in fact quite good and he got a lot of mileage out of whispering his lines. He’s now arrived, as Gill points out in a review of Wallander -  that less means more.