oOoBarracuda I opted, again, for what the powers that be on the internet call the most faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's Cymbeline, and that is certainly what I got when I watched Elijah Moshinsky's 1982 made for T.V. version. Part of BBC Shakespeare; Cymbeline brought together Richard Johnson, Hugh Thomas, and Helen Mirren to tell the tale of the angry King of Britain whose daughter has chosen to marry a poor man, below her class level. Reeling from this betrayal, King Cymbeline banishes his new son-in-law who eventually goes off to fight for Rome in the army. Exploring themes familiar in works of Shakespeare such as, appearance v. reality, youth and age, and forgiveness; Cymbeline is a quintessential work of the Bard, even if not one of his more famous pieces. The daughter of King Cymbeline, of Britain; Imogen (Helen Mirren) neglects her father's wishes of marrying nobility and instead marries Posthumus (Michael Pennington). enraged at the feeling of disloyalty from his daughter, Cymbeline banishes Posthumus to Italy where he eventually fights for Rome. While in Italy, Posthumus meets a man named Cloten who believes that all women are just waiting to be seduced. Cloten wagers with Posthumus that he can travel to the British court and woo Imogen. Remaining steadfast to her husband, Imogen refuses Cloten's advancements. Realizing he will not successfully woo Imogen, Cloten hides in a trunk taken to Imogen's room one evening and watches her sleep, taking a bracelet from Posthumus on his way out of her chambers. Cloten then returns to Rome to brag about his seeming victory to Posthumus. Posthumus becomes enraged with his wife's alleged infidelity and sets orders to have her killed. Saved by a servant, Pisanio (John Kane) who believes in Imogen's innocence, he urges Imogen to dress as a man and infiltrate the Roman army in order to set things right with Posthumus. Imogen's task becomes more complicated when Posthumus, feeling regret, believing to be responsible for the death of his wife switches uniforms and begins fighting with the British army to try and redeem himself. Shakespeare crafts a story that is never quite what it seems to be, even to the end.As noted, this presentation is part of a BBC Shakespeare series and looks very much like a play on film. It needs to be mentioned that, at times, this does not play to the advantage. Oftentimes the set restrictions of a television program leave the actors seeming cramped and restricted on-screen. Other times, however, the closeness played to the production's advantage. For instance, in the touching scene between Imogen and Posthumus before his leaving for Italy, their close proximity added to the love they shared. The farewell scene culminated in a beautiful shot of the newlyweds centered against a window. This shot was wonderful and provided a nice foreshadowing of the separation they would experience upon Posthumus' departure. What a treat to see a work of Helen Mirren's from the 80's. I'm really only familiar with her more recent work, and now I can safely say that she was as good an actress as she ever was in 1982. The film moved a bit slow for me, but the story is captivating and Mirren's acting will keep you hooked until the end.Appearance v. reality, a theme Shakespeare explored throughout much of his work, was heavily relied upon in Cymbeline. This is most glaring in the beginning of the film. Even though the King comes off as an alpha male, attempting to thrust his will upon his daughter, he has relinquished all ruling power to the Queen. Throughout the film, the Queen gives off the appearance of siding with Imogen, yet all the while working against her. Of course, later in the film, Imogen dresses as a man attempting to give off the appearance of an Italian soldier, while in reality being a regal woman married to Posthumus. The ideas of youth v. age are also explored throughout the production. The King, living isolated from even his own family, forgets (or, rather, ignores) what it is like to fall in love, and is only thinking of class and tradition when encouraging his daughter to marry the right man. The movie really rests upon each character's ability to forgive. Imogen seeks forgiveness from Posthumus because she is innocent of what he believes her to have done. Posthumus also seeks forgiveness from Imogen for doubting her and trying to have her killed. Although not one of his more famous works, Cymbeline has a rich story that remains one of my personal favorites.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU This rare play is fascinating and surprising. It is first of all political, highly political. The queen, or rather wife of the king of Britain in Roman times, is a plotter who tries to get the crown for her own son. The king has lost his two own sons and the queen has to get rid of his daughter. She plots and plots but to no avail apparently since she will die and her own son will be killed by one of the lost but surviving sons of the king. But things being complex the queen leads the king to refuse to pay the tribute to the Romans so that, she hopes, the Romans will come and get the king. Unluckily the two sons and the man who has raised them and the husband of the king's daughter who the king had banished save the day and defeat the Romans. So much for politics.That's were Shakespeare turns magic. Till the very last instant in the last scene everyone is under the threat of being killed for some crime he has or he is accused of having committed. And the various death sentences that are hovering over the heads of them all fall like leaves in the autumn, but fall flat on the ground. Shakespeare uses contrived explanations that are so marvelous that no one can refuse to believe them and then we have a father who meets his two supposedly dead sons, is reunited with his supposedly lost daughter, is confronted to his son in law who he had banished and yet helped defeat the Romans, is brought face to face to a soldier he had banished a long time ago and who had taken care of his two sons. And he finally ends up the day by granting pardon to every one prisoner. That's a charming happy ending but constructed so swiftly and wisely that we doubt it will really end without any more killing till the last word about a general pardon is uttered. Then a soothsayer can come in and explain some mysterious prediction the son in law had managed to receive from Jupiter himself and all is well that ends well.Yet the play is a lot more interesting than that after all. It contains some patterns that are so Shakespearian. Two brothers are quite a common pattern in many plays. A difficult or impossible marriage, that's common too, in a way a primordial feature in many comedies. An old king that has become bitter and a wife that is manipulating him into unwise political decisions and human crimes is there to remind us of Lady Macbeth. A son in law who is receiving some poison in the ear when he listens to some report or rumor about his wife is there too reminding us of Hamlet. The exiled people living in the wild, or nearly so, can make us think of King Lear and his period outside in the wild nature. The disembarking Romans are not far from King Lear again. And of course the daughter of the king disguised into a page is so common that no one could miss it. We could actually be surprised that there be only one disguised girl.This production has another charm. It is systematically played in Renaissance costumes and the setting is Dutch or Flemish looking. That's in fact a charm added to the play because it enables it to move from the Roman paraphernalia on one side and the rustic if not barbaric attire and accoutrement on the other side. It makes recognizing who is who a little bit difficult but it gives the play a real universal fragrance. The BBC was already getting globalized in 1983 when they decided (in 1978) to produce the complete plays by Shakespeare. And that project was a unique decision in a time when DVDs did not exist yet, and the Internet was still a secret military tool in some laboratories and universities in America. It is a good thing they did it and many other public television networks in the world could do the same thing for their classics: all Molière, all Racine, all Corneille, all Goethe, all Schiller, and I guess we could move then to more modern projects. I won't speak of operas because that is being done, little by little somewhere in the world: all Handel, all Mozart, all Wagner, all Richard Strauss, etc, without speaking of the Italians, Verdi, Rossini, and so many others. It is a fine treat to get into 32 plays by Shakespeare.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

Matthew Jones 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.

Tom May 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.