Prime Time for the Bard

Putting Shakespeare on film can be troublesome because the playwright's ringing verbal resonances tend to lose some of their force in a medium that emphasizes sight over sound. Putting a Shakespeare film on television is doubly troublesome, for the small screen reduces the principals to tiny figures who are all but lost in panoramic scenes. Despite the difficulties, England's Royal Shakespeare Company, under Director Peter Hall, has turned A Midsummer Night's Dream into a richly textured color film that comes across as TV at its best. Millions of Americans will have a chance to view it on CBS next Sunday (Feb. 9, 9-11:15 p.m., E.S.T.).

Frankly Wicked. In the past, some directors have coped with Shakespearean plays by cutting the text. Sir Laurence Olivier's unforgettable 1946 film of Henry V included only half the original; Franco Zeffirelli's recent Romeo and Juliet cut more than half. To Director Hall, 38; the best solution was to leave Shakespeare's words alone. Since A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the bard's shortest plays, he cut only ten lines.

Hall emphasized closeups instead of movie-style shots of sweeping vistas and cluttered tableaux, which, though characteristic of Shakespeare on the big screen, are hardly suitable for TV's cramped picture. "A long shot," he explained, "diminishes the power of what is being said." The many full-face shots build an air of intimacy between actor and audience that is especially suitable for the TV screen (though the film was also released in London last week as a feature movie). "For the first time," says Paul Rogers, who plays Bottom in a blustering, John Bullish vein, "a Shakespearean movie has been made that doesn't sacrifice the poet." The flowing iambics carry the play forward on the swells and lulls in some of Shakespeare's most exquisite lyrics.

Hall deliberately avoids the storybook approach to A Midsummer Night's Dream that some directors have adopted. This is no ethereal child's fantasy "with fairies in little white tutus skipping through gossamer forests," as Hall puts it. He sees the play, rather, as a poignant tale of "the universal experience of falling in love on Monday, out of love on Tuesday, in love again on Wednesday, and discovering on Thursday that your best friend loves the same girl." David Warner, remembered from Morgan (see CINEMA color), and Diana Rigg, onetime heroine of ABC's The Avengers, play two of the lovers as hot-blooded, impulsive adolescents; they are supported by Michael Jayston, a four-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Helen Mirren, one of the group's youngest leading ladies, who is currently touring the U.S. in Much Ado About Nothing. Hall's fairies are earthy and dirty-faced. His Titania (Judi Dench) is frankly "wicked, sexy, and erotic," and appears throughout covered only by a few leaves, a degree of nudity unusual on U.S. TV but perfectly natural in Shakespeare's lush forest setting.

Full House. To bring out the play's down-to-earthness, Hall filmed it not in a studio but in a tangled English wood located only twelve miles from Stratford-on-Avon. Though it rained continuously, Hall and his shivering actors tramped for six weeks through the forest with hand-held cameras--"they give a sense of breathing," says Hall--trying to capture what he calls "that wet, steaming, glistening quality that only an English summer can have."

Though CBS will have to scratch two of its top Sunday prime-timers, the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and Mission: Impossible, the network is undoubtedly delighted with the arrangement. The sponsor, Xerox, is inserting only two commercials into the 2 1/2-hour play. The Royal Shakespeare Company, which Hall helped turn into Britain's most distinguished repertory company, may eventually give CBS as many as 20 plays for U.S. television and for later release as feature films. At present, Actor Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) and Director Peter Brook (Marat/Sade, The Visit) are working together on an austere, black-and-white film of King Lear. On Sunday night alone, Hall estimates, the TV audience for A Midsummer Night's Dream will be large enough to fill the 1,426-seat playhouse at Stratford for 30 years.

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