Description: BBC Shakespeare DVD 5 Pack Comedies Giftbox Set William Shakespeare loved to laugh. One need look no further than to explore his gift for dramatic humor in his great comedic plays. The BBC Shakespeare Comedy Gift Box gives us five of the best of Shakespeare's plays performed by great actors and the best British directors. The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, & As You Like It. The actors include: Helen Mirren, Richard Pasco, John Cleese, Michael Hordern, Warren Mitchell, Gemma Jones and many more. The list goes on.....the laughter runs deep. DVD brings out the luster of the periods sets and the audio crisply delivers the voices of the past. English subtitles have been added to give the viewer the luxury of reviewing the crisp dialogue (when needed).
Programs in this Comedy Giftbox Set includes: The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,& As You Like It
An As You Like It that's just Mozartean The actors really bring the language to life, and you can actually hear it. Helen Mirren as Rosalind in As You Like just reduced me to a puddle. She can, in just a few words, bring you to that Shakespearean/Mozartean heart that is so intense, so transparent, so tender. A transcendent performance.
Quality Control Poor The plays are excellent, exactly as I had hoped and remembered from the original TV broadcasts. My set, however, arrived with a defective copy of "The Tempest." Although the disc was free of mars or scratches, ACT III is corrupted and unplayable on any of several machines. Despite Ambrose's assurance that they will replace damaged discs, my emails have gone unanswered.
Wonderful, but the best are absent I am overjoyed that these fine performances have finally been released at a reasonable price (I was beginning to suspect that those holding the rights wanted to suppress their distribution); however, I am disappointed that the three most amusing, accessible, and perhaps best performances in this series are absent from this collection: Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Merry Wives is by far the funniest of the comedies produced in this series, and although there have been recent productions of the other two plays, the performances in this series are superior in both cases. If five plays had to be chosen for this collection, the three mentioned above should have been chosen in favor of The Tempest, Midsummer Nights Dream, and As You Like it. Perhaps these will be released in a future collection. In spite of this, I would whole heartedly recommend buying this collection of fine performances.
No Measure for Measure? The BBC Shakespearean plays are by far the best done that I've seen. I viewed nearly all of these in my two semesters of Shakespeare classes at university. However, I can't understand why Measure for Measure would be left out of these. Tim Pigott-Smith was superb as Angelo! Overall this is a fantastic deal on the plays that are available. They are terribly difficult to find and of highest quality.
A Tragedy of Comic Proportions While this is a wonderful way to purchase some of the BBC gems that are so HARD to find at a reasonable price anywhere...and while they have picked some very good titles... the fact that they left out what is simply the best version of Twelfth Night that has ever been produced is simply tragic. Felicity Kendal was fabulous as Viola and the rest of the cast was fantastic. I have finally been able to find this brilliant play at Documentary Video in a DVD version, but it's really sad that, in what is otherwise a wonderful collection of plays, they left the best on the cutting room floor.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
