Shakespeare Live! From the RSC

 

Somehow I think that I missed Shakespeare Live! From the RSC when it was shown in cinemas in April 2016. It was to celebrate 400 years from Shakespeare's death.  In any event, it was shown on the BBC last week and for me, these were the highlights. Who would have thought combining Al Murray and Judy Dench as Bottom and Titania from A Midsummer Nights Dream? I can imagine those around the table discussing casting must have been gripped with laughter. In the end it worked really well.

Then there was Sanjeev Bhaskar OBE, Chancellor of the University of Sussex (famous in this house for playing DI Sunil Khan opposite Nicola Walker in Unforgotten) and Meera Syal CBE playing Benedict and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing. And they are actually married to each other!

Catherine Tate performed the seven ages of man speech, with some help from men, young and old.

Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff were marvellous in Macbeth.

It was great to see Pippa Nixon (more than once on this blog) as Rosalind in As You Like It.

The actors, one by one, put different emphasis on Hamlet's "to be or not to be" ended with the then Prince Charles telling the other actors how it should be done.

And at the end, David Suchet presents the famous lines from The Tempest. Brilliant.

In a separate programme,  "Gregory Doran Remembers ..... Shakespeare Live! From the RSC" can be found on BBC iPlayer.