Shakespeare’s Complete Works, and Hamlet again October 6, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , trackbackA Complete Works is something every home should have, an essential part of the personal library along with a dictionary and undergraduate texts you couldn’t quite bear to sell. Mine has been in storage in Auckland for ten years now, and has probably rotted, so I recently bought the RSC edition. I’ve just sent away for a more up-to-date version, the BBC Shakespeare Collection, including films of all the plays. It’s not easy reading through a script, and watching a fairly faithful production has got to be a better way of preparing to see a play you don’t know well.
Courtesy of the Observer, I watched Zeferrelli’s 1980 production starring Mel Gibson, Glenn Close and Helena Bonham-Carter this evening. It seemed so much less intense than the version I saw recently at the RSC, and while Mel Gibson is better than I’d have expected, he isn’t a patch on David Tennant. Gibson’s Hamlet is far more balanced, less angry and less passionate. Glenn Close’s Gertrude is a treat though, more calculating and ambiguous than Penny Downie’s. It’s also a lot shorter.
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