James Reynard
Role: Timon

Do you recall what your first ever Shakespeare role was and can you tell us your thoughts on your first performance?

Hmm... have to cast the mind back for this one! I recall a workshop on “Macbeth” at school, but I think my first professional performance was as Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet”. I remember doing what I thought might work, but without much actual knowledge about acting! I think it was very exterior – someone in the cast said “Like a Christmas Tree, lots on the outside, but not much inside!” Anyway, I guess there was something inside as I got some very nice critiques and I learned a lot from the production (I played the same character twice more during subsequent years).

You have been incredibly prolific with Shakespeare in your career, more so than any other cast member. What draws you to Shakespeare again and again?

King Lear (1983 TV programme)
Laurence Olivier's second Shakespeare film (following his role in Paul Czinner's 1937 As You Like It) pushed adaptation of the Bard onto an entirely new plane. Fascinating not just for its approach to the text but also for its portrait of multiple facets of the British character, calibrated for explicitly propagandist purposes, it came too late in the Second World War to be a call to arms as such, but formed a powerful reminder of what Britain was defending.



Directed by: Laurence Olivier

CAST
King Henry V of England: OLIVIER, Laurence
Chorus: BANKS, Leslie
Ancient Pistol: NEWTON, Robert
Lieutenant Bardolph: EMERTON, Roy
Fluellen, captain in the English Army :KNIGHT, Esmond
Princess Katherine: ASHERSON, Renee
Archbishop of Canterbury: AYLMER, Felix
Bishop of Ely: HELPMANN, Robert
King Charles VI of France: WILLIAMS, Harcourt
The Dauphin: ADRIAN, Max
Mountjoy, the French Herald: TRUMAN, Ralph
Duke of Exeter: HANNEN, Nicholas
Alice, a lady-in-waiting: ST. HELIER, Ivy
Mistress Quickly: JACKSON, Freda
Sir John Falstaff: ROBEY, George


AUDIO / IMAGE HD Restoration - Sources and/or Archive copies quality used for this restoration: good.

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Prof. Ladan Niayesh
Literary Advisor

My starting question is very simple: what was your first exposure to Shakespeare?

My first exposure was very classically Laurence Olivier’s "Hamlet" seen on TV as a child, in a poorly translated Persian (my native tongue). At that young age, I was obviously more interested in the ghost and misty battlements than anything else. But the first play I was able to read in full text for a school curriculum was – rather unusually for a school programme – "Coriolanus". The guidance of a passionate instructor made me all at one go fall in love with Shakespeare and want to become a teacher myself. I am much beholden to the gentleman for both reasons, and one of the highlights of my career many years later was to have his son among my students at university for a course on Shakespeare!

As a distinguished scholar of Shakespeare, can you talk us through your educational journey with Shakespeare?

Prof. Ladan Niayesh
Literary Advisor

Focusing specifically on the play "Timon of Athens"; let's settle the debate once and for all: is it a tragedy or a problem play?

The answer to your question depends on your definition of “tragedy”. In the first Folio of 1623 (that is the first edition of Shakespeare’s complete works), "Timon of Athens" is grouped with the tragedies. The other two categories in the volume are comedies and histories, and obviously Timon could not belong to either of those other options. It is a tragedy insofar as its action is based on human suffering and a catharsis (purging of emotions), with the fate of the central figure inspiring pity and fear (the two expected Aristotelian tragic emotions) in the audience. But the action fails to fully qualify as a standard tragic action in five stages neatly following the rise and fall of a hero, complete with a final catastrophe involving an onstage death in the early modern English tradition. Here, the hero’s fall occurs much earlier than at the end, and he dies offstage, in a kind of ellipsis. The defiant, fighting dimension of heroism, meanwhile, is transferred to another character, Alcibiades, who embodies the nemesis of Athens here and who closes the play in Timon’s absence, making the denouement problematic. So all in all, we have a play and its eponymous character resisting and rejecting tragic heroism and a proper denouement, making this a problem play, or a ‘problem tragedy’ if you prefer.

It is now established that Shakespeare collaborated with Thomas Middleton to write "Timon of Athens"; how does this play differ from Shakespeare's solo body of work either in structure, tone, lyrical pace, etc.

Prof. Ladan Niayesh
Literary Advisor

What would you say is the overreaching difference between this adaptation and Shakespeare's original play? And how would you evaluate this evolution of script?

The first obvious difference is the change of medium. Shakespeare & Co wrote their play texts – or “scripts”, as you have spontaneously called them – at a time when cinema was not an option. Even if the circular form of an early modern stage offers more changes of perspectives than a frontal opera stage, we come nowhere near the multifocal options of a modern camera, its movements, the cuts, the angles, etc. The cinematic medium by essence invites successive takes and multiplicity of perspective, so the revised text might as well follow and adjust to that, with multiple hands and voices contributing tonal changes: some more philosophical and others more poetic, some ancient Greek, others early modern and others original and atemporal. Yet the ensemble keeps its thematic unity, orchestrated and led by the conductor that Maximianno is by training and background. Overall, I think this version works more in a dialogic, or even symphonic, way across periods and genres, which is a great way of revisiting multiple legacies, not just transposing them in awe and reverence, but writing back to them and continuing the conversations they started.

Do you think using texts and sonnets from Shakespeare's vast body of work is an effective way of adapting and evolving his plays into something even more modern and empowering?

EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS
Master Classes - Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays - Lecture 2: Troilus and Cressida
by Prof. Marjorie Garber
Harvard University - Department of English



Lecture 1: Introduction
Lecture 2: Troilus and Cressida
Lecture 3: Measure for Measure
Lecture 4: Othello
Lecture 5: King Lear
Lecture 6: Macbeth
Lecture 7: Antony and Cleopatra
Lecture 8: Coriolanus
Lecture 9: Pericles
Lecture 10: Cymbeline
Lecture 11: The Winter’s Tale
Lecture 12: The Tempest
Lecture 13: Plenary - Review session

This recording is for educational purposes only and is covered under Fair Use doctrine - Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.

Support Us - Donate Now !

Why Donate?