Shakespeare’s heroes on the world stage. About Shakespeare’s drama production “Romeo and Juliet”
One of the reasons for the long-term dramatic success of Shakespeare’s dramas is their amazing theatricality. Many spectators received from Shakespeare’s performances the brightest theatrical impressions in their lives. Many actors best revealed their talents when playing roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Many of the creators of the performances reached their main creative peaks in the process of translating Shakespearean ideas into scenic images.
However, the production of plays by an English playwright is as difficult as it is tempting. Each director who has taken on him faces complex questions connected with different traditions, approaches and possibilities of interpretation of the Shakespearean dramas.
What, for example, is more important: to convey to the spectator the spirit of the time depicted in the play of Shakespeare or to show the points of its contact with the modern era?
In the first case, it is necessary to accurately reproduce the details
In the second case, it is entirely permissible to arbitrarily treat the historical background of the play with the aim of adapting it to the needs and trends of the present-up to changing characters into modern costumes. In 1925, the Englishman Barry Jackson presented to the public the production of Hamlet, in which heroes dressed in the latest fashion acted. Since then, the tradition of “modernizing” Shakespearean works has developed.
In solving the question of
The next question is: what should be the main emphasis in the play – on the play of the actor performing the main role in the Shakespearean play, or on the actor’s ensemble involved in general?
The first approach – building a performance on the game of actors “stars” – has a long tradition. It was laid still by the outstanding English actor of the beginning of XIX century. Edmond Keen, who in Shakespearean dramas attracted primarily images of titanic heroes endowed with mighty passions. Embodying these images on stage, Keane used all the richness of the colors of the actor’s palette; The general setting of the play in this case is a secondary role. On the recall of one of his contemporaries, it was all the same to look at Shakespeare’s characters in Keane’s performance that “to read Shakespeare at the lightning’s shine”
The opposite approach envisages a thoughtful composition of the performance and a well-coordinated work of the ensemble. Adherent to this approach, the German director Ludwig Kroneg explained the entire company thoroughly the character of the play and the place of each performer in the play. He paid special attention to the mass scenes with the help of which he strove to show on the stage the diversity of human characters and mores.
Finally, the question arises of who, in fact, should play the same Romeo and Juliet. Young actors, naturally emitting on the stage the energy and power of love passion, or experienced performers who can convincingly convey the scale of the feelings of this hero? For example, the famous actress Eleanor Duse played the role of Juliet on the day of her fourteenth birthday, that is, at an age almost exactly the age of the Shakespearean heroine, and her play caused a real storm of enthusiasm in the hall. But the Italian actor Ernesto Rossi dared to play the role of Romeo in sixty years, and did not resort to a wig and makeup. And what? Thanks to the impeccable acting technique and the skill of speech, he brilliantly coped with this task.
Be that as it may, with every talented production, the images of Romeo and Juliet turn to the viewer with new faces. In this – the pledge of their theatrical immortality.
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