Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.
Strap in, because this one is going to hurt a little. I consider myself a fan of Shakespeare in the sense that I’ve read all of his plays and a good chunk (possibly all) of his poetry. Hell, I majored in English, so appreciating the man’s work is sort of a requirement. That said, it figures that I would be interested in the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play I had to read for multiple classes. This is an interesting production for a couple of reasons. It’s Shakespeare, which means that it’s going to be a prestige production in 1935. It’s also going to feature a lot of key players from the era, the sort of actors not typically associated with the Bard, which makes it doubly interesting.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to watch. It’s easy to think that Shakespeare wouldn’t be any more or less difficult than any other type of stage work, but half an hour of this production will demonstrate the folly of that position. None of these actors are trained in this sort of work, and that is rapidly evident, especially when the fact that a large percentage of the people on screen were often involved in light comedy and musicals. Sure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most serious works, but that doesn’t change the fact that people who aren’t really trained to do the work are going to be obviously untrained to do the work on camera.
