Word: falstaffs
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Through various cinematic techniques, Branagh alludes to and illuminates Henry's affinity with the lower classes of England. We are treated to a series of oneiric sequences in which Henry turns in on his past life. Here we see the dissipated life he led under Falstaff's tutelage. The bacchanalian rollicking of yesterday contrasts sharply with the cold reality of the present. The film brilliantly captures these ironies of Henry's transformation. In one tense scene, Henry orders one of his old thieving comrades, Bardolph, to be hanged. The poor man looks straight at Henry and as the young king...
...acting--with a few negligible exceptions--is superb. The heart of this play--Prince Hal (Bill Camp) and Sir John Falstaff (Jeremy Geidt)--beats with perfect rhythm. Mistress Quickly (Remio Airaldi), Doll Tearsheet (Maggie Rush), the Archbishop of York (Herb Downer), and Justice Shallow (William Young) are particularly memorable. Under the direction of Ron Daniels, these characters are shaped pertinently from the text. Not simply characters from Shakespeare, they are characters we interact with daily They are our friends and families; they are ourselves...
Terrible are the humiliations that Shakespeare inflicts on the aging Sir John Falstaff. Stuffed into a hamper of dirty laundry to escape a jealous husband, the portly knight gets ignominiously flung into the Thames. "Oh, oh, oh," he finally cries as the supposedly merry wives of Windsor burn him with their tapers. In setting this black comedy to music, Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, degrade the hero still further. "Lord, make him impotent," the women chorus as everyone flails and pummels the fallen hero. And yet after his punishment on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music last...
That was the most remarkable of the many striking effects in German director Peter Stein's production of Falstaff, with which the celebrated Welsh National Opera was making its American debut. But the applause that swept the amiably musty BAM theater was not just for Stein. Nor just for Donald Maxwell's passionate performance as Sir John. Nor even just for the smiling Princess of Wales, Princess Di herself, who appeared in a glowing white satin dress for the black-tie benefit. Also to be applauded and celebrated was the start of a new kind of opera season...
Cardiff, of course, is where the new Falstaff was born (last September), after the Welsh National Opera spent years courting Stein, who made his reputation at Berlin's famous Schaubuhne theater. Stein saw Falstaff as an intensely personal drama, clearly sexual and even slightly sadistic. "Hold your paunch, celebrate it," he instructed Maxwell at one point during rehearsals. "For Falstaff, it is not grossness, it is greatness, virility." Bearing out Epstein's point, the modest dimensions of the BAM theater enabled Stein to stage Verdi's last masterpiece as a kind of chamber work, with the stage action fast-moving...