Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
The Tragedy of Richard III, William Shakespeare
So I watched the BBC's new Richard III starring some guy with the unlikely name of Eggs Benedict Cummerbund (or summat like that). He was good, but really, if you're competent to speak Shakespeare then you can hardly fail when you have lines as fabulous as Richard III has. This version has hacked down not only numerous (perceived and real) enemies of the hunchbacked King but the play itself, reducing one of Shakespeare's longest works to a mere two hours. I used to wonder what's Richard's Tragedy, since he's a self declared villain from the outset? Now I see it as his descent from jolly, capering villainous pretender to paranoid, fearful King, unable to trust anybody. Which brings me to Ben Daniels' subtle portrayal of Buckingham, which outclasses Cumberbatch's work by some distance, convincingly dealing with the challenging problem of initially seeming to support Richard in spite of any outrage before baulking at the murder of the true heirs in the Tower.
In truth I much prefered both Ian McKellan's film take on Richard III as fascist dictator and Al Pacino's even more cut down performance in Looking for Richard, but this play is so good you just can't make it bad...
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