Shakespeare Magazine 11
The shiny new-look Shakespeare Magazine 11 is adorned with a stunning cover image of Lily James and Richard Madden in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. Also in Issue 11, SK Moore tells us about his compelling new graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, while broadcaster Samira Ahmed turns her magnificently mercurial mind to the subject of Shakespeare. We have words with Pub Landlord comedian Al Murray about his recent brush with the Bard (and Judi Dench) at RSC Shakespeare Live. And our Editor raves about a 3-DVD box set of 1960s TV Shakespeare classic The Wars of the Roses. We chat with the great Don Warrington, star of Talawa Theatre’s earth-shaking King Lear at Manchester’s Royal Exchange – youthful co-star Alfred Enoch joins in too. Also this issue: we imagine what Tom Hiddleston’s Hamlet would look like, we explore the life of Elizabeth Siddal, Victorian Ophelia, and Bristol’s Insane Root scare the living daylights out of us with their Macbeth!
The shiny new-look Shakespeare Magazine 11 is adorned with a stunning cover image of Lily James and Richard Madden in Kenneth Branagh’s Romeo and Juliet. Also in Issue 11, SK Moore tells us about his compelling new graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, while broadcaster Samira Ahmed turns her magnificently mercurial mind to the subject of Shakespeare. We have words with Pub Landlord comedian Al Murray about his recent brush with the Bard (and Judi Dench) at RSC Shakespeare Live. And our Editor raves about a 3-DVD box set of 1960s TV Shakespeare classic The Wars of the Roses. We chat with the great Don Warrington, star of Talawa Theatre’s earth-shaking King Lear at Manchester’s Royal Exchange – youthful co-star Alfred Enoch joins in too. Also this issue: we imagine what Tom Hiddleston’s Hamlet would look like, we explore the life of Elizabeth Siddal, Victorian Ophelia, and Bristol’s Insane Root scare the living daylights out of us with their Macbeth!
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Samira Ahmed <br />
A<br />
Front Row Seat<br />
Best known for her work as co-presenter of<br />
BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Samira Ahmed is one<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Interview by Pat Reid<br />
You’re a massive pop culture aficionado, able<br />
to discourse on everything from religion<br />
in Star Wars and the passion of early ’70s<br />
British Asian David Bowie fans to the politics<br />
of superhero films and feminism in ’50s<br />
Westerns. Do you view <strong>Shakespeare</strong> as part<br />
of this – or does it reside in a separate highculture<br />
universe?<br />
“Of course <strong>Shakespeare</strong>’s at the heart of it all.<br />
The real revelation was when I went to see<br />
Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, which he’d petitioned<br />
Marvel Studios to be allowed to direct, and which<br />
he transformed into King Lear in Asgard. Tom<br />
Hiddleston’s Loki was clearly Edmund, Anthony<br />
Hopkins was Lear, and – if only Hollywood<br />
allowed women to do anything – Renee Russo<br />
would have had an interesting Gertrude from<br />
Hamlet-like relationship with Loki.<br />
“I asked Bryan Singer about casting in<br />
superhero films and he said he deliberately got<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong>ans Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart<br />
on the first X-Men film because you need that epic<br />
understanding to make superheroes come alive.<br />
He said he was inspired by Christopher Reeve –<br />
a great, Julliard-trained stage actor – and Glenn<br />
Ford in Superman. Everyone does it now, but<br />
Superman was the first to put the two together.<br />
Tom Hiddleston, one of our greatest superhero-<br />
<strong>Shakespeare</strong> hybrids, was directly inspired by Reeve<br />
too, noting how Reeve was mocked by fellow<br />
students, and indeed by highbrow figures in the<br />
theatre world, for daring to treat a comic book hero<br />
with respect and love. I miss Reeve so much.<br />
“And there are loads of Westerns which are<br />
quite overtly <strong>Shakespeare</strong>an, most obviously in<br />
those big themes about revenge and cruelty and a<br />
quest for power, but more literally too on a plot<br />
level. Red River is an all-male King Lear, but with<br />
a happy ending. Yellow Sky is The Tempest. There’s<br />
something about the rules of the Western, like the<br />
rules of the sonnet which enable great creativity<br />
because of the constraints. It’s what you can do<br />
within the format when everyone knows the rules<br />
and the tropes that audiences come to see.”<br />
shakespeare magazine 21
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