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    Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles
    Unavailable
    Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles
    Unavailable
    Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles
    Ebook375 pages5 hours

    Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles

    By Julian Curry

    5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Thirteen leading actors take us behind the scenes, each recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles.

    • Brian Cox on Titus Andronicus in Deborah Warner's visceral RSC production
    • Judi Dench on being directed by Franco Zeffirelli as a twenty-three-year-old Juliet
    • Ralph Fiennes on Shakespeare's least sympathetic hero Coriolanus
    • Rebecca Hall on Rosalind in As You Like It, directed by her father, Sir Peter
    • Derek Jacobi on his hilariously poker-backed Malvolio for Michael Grandage
    • Jude Law on his Hamlet, a palpable hit in the West End and on Broadway
    • Adrian Lester on a modern-dress Henry V at the National, during the invasion of Iraq
    • Ian McKellen on his Macbeth, opposite Judi Dench in Trevor Nunn's RSC production
    • Helen Mirren on a role she was born for, and has played three times: Cleopatra
    • Tim Pigott-Smith on Leontes in Peter Hall's Restoration Winter's Tale at the National
    • Kevin Spacey on his high-tech, modern-dress Richard II
    • Patrick Stewart on Prospero in Rupert Goold's arctic Tempest for the RSC
    • Penelope Wilton on Isabella in Jonathan Miller's 'chamber' Measure for Measure

    The actors discuss their characters, working through the play scene by scene, with refreshing candour and in forensic detail. The result is a masterclass on playing each role, invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare - and fascinating for audiences of the plays.

    Together, the interviews give one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of these characters in performance, and of the choices that these great actors have made in bringing them thrillingly to life.

    Each interview is also available as an individual ebook as part of the Shakespeare on Stage series.

    'These passages of times remembered contribute vividly to the sense of a teemingly creative period when Shakespeare seemed to have been rediscovered.' Trevor Nunn, from his Foreword

    'absorbing and original... Curry's actors are often thinking and talking as that other professional performer, Shakespeare himself, might have done' TLS

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNick Hern Books
    Release dateMay 23, 2013
    ISBN9781780011813
    Unavailable
    Shakespeare on Stage: Thirteen Leading Actors on Thirteen Key Roles
    Author

    Julian Curry

    Julian Curry is a writer and actor who has appeared in many of Shakespeare's plays. His extensive stage credits include leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and in London's West End. He has acted in twenty-one of Shakespeare's plays. He is also well known as Claude Erskine-Brown in the popular television series Rumpole of the Bailey. Numerous other TV credits include Inspector Morse, Sherlock Holmes, The Misanthrope, King Lear, Kavanagh QC, The Wyvern Mystery, A Fine Romance and Midsomer Murders. Among many movies are The Missionary, Fall from Grace, Rasputin, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Escape to Victory (starring Pelé). His one-man entertainment Hic! or The Entire History of Wine (abridged) has been performed over a hundred and fifty times, from Hong Kong to Bermuda to San Francisco, and sold out as a cartoon-illustrated book. He has also written and recorded A Guide to Wine for Naxos Audiobook. He is the author of Shakespeare On Stage, shortlisted for the 2010 Theatre Book Prize, and Shakespeare On Stage: Volume 2, both published by Nick Hern Books.

    Read more from Julian Curry

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    Reviews for Shakespeare on Stage

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    • 5/5
      I enjoyed every single one of these interviews -- even the ones with actors I'd never heard of before or about roles I haven't seen performed. Each is a treasure house of insight into some of Shakespeare's greatest and most challenging characters.

      Definitely recommended for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare in particular or performing arts in general.
    • 5/5
      The author of this (Julian Curry) may be recognizable to you as Claude Erskine-Brown of Rumpole (remember, on PBS?) He led the various contacts through an analysis of how they interpreted key roles for purposes of a particular production. Each interview walks the actors through key aspects of the production, critical reception, specific quotes from the text and character analysis. Together these provide the reader with a better sense of the performer’s process. I particularly enjoyed Judy Dench talking about playing Juliet under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli. Listening to her description of what he was trying to do, it seems as if he was using this stage production to prepare for the Olivia Hussey movie version. (Very italian, very natural, very cinematic). He adopts what Dench calls a naturalistic approach, with “a proper life going on”. In terms of interpretation, what I found most interesting was Dench discussion of how Juliet grows up over the course of the play. She’s a fourteen year old girl with just that level of maturity at the beginning of the play, but by the close, she’s become more of a thinking adult. But who would have thought that consummate professional Derek Jacobi suffered from stage fright over the course of a three year period? The role he discusses in this book is Malvolio in Twelfth Night and he admits it’s a smaller part that he took on just because it was the bare minimum that he felt capable of performing in returning to the stage. Kevin Spacey talks about Richard II and that’s all about power, so right up the alley of the House of Cards star. There’s more from Jude Law, Penelope Wilton, Helen Mirren and others. (Note: depending upon what device you use or possibly your geographical situation, you may be able to license individual chapters from this book so that you needn’t pay to read about Brian Cox in Titus Andronicus or Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus if you choose not to do so. The UK-based publisher is Nick Hern. which may explain why I couldn’t purchase/license those chapters broken apart, using a Kindle in the U.S.)