Posts Tagged ‘Simon Russell Beale’

Marianna Yarovskaya

Think you have it bad here? When you see what’s selling in Russian bookstores, you’ll be grateful for Amazon.com. Filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya was presenting her Women of the Gulag at Cannes International Film Market, and was en route to Chisnau in Moldova, where the film about the last surviving women of the Soviet gulag system will be getting an award.

But she took a moment to write to me from Cannes: “Moscow friends occasionally send me snapshots from local and big bookstores. Here are a few more. Photos of ‘wonderful’ legally sold books in Moscow stores that have been sent to me: Beria: The Best Manager of the Twentieth Century (left), The Genius of Stalin, The Genius in Power.” This was photographed at the newspaper stand near Kazansky train station in Moscow this morning.”

Joseph Stalin is infamous and renowned. But Lavrentiy Beria? Not so much. Yet he engineered the Katyń massacres, which destroyed a generation of Poland’s leadership, about 22,000 officers and civilians.

He administered and expanded the vast gulag system, the subject of Marianna’s film. He also oversaw secret detention facilities for Soviet scientists and engineers, and the Communist takeover of the nations in Central and Eastern Europe, along with the repression of the people in those countries. He even supervised the development of a Soviet atomic bomb project.

But some of you will remember him from The Death of Stalin. Simon Russell Beale portrays the unsavory Beria in the film clip below, with Jeffrey Tambor as Georgy Malenkov (in white), who briefly assumed power after Stalin’s death, and Steve Buscemi as the wily Nikita Khrushchev, who launched a successful coup d’état.

Theatrical distribution of the film was banned in Russia, but pirated copies circulated.

Rory Kinnear’s Bolingbroke should get more love.

The Shakespeare-deniers, of course, say the upstart from Stratford could not have written the plays, that it must have been some nobleman in Elizabeth’s court – how, they ask, would a glover’s son know the way courtiers and kings converse at court? The obvious answer, of course, is that he didn’t. He made it up out of his head. Historians agree that the royal interactions don’t ring true. Now, however, this is the way we imagine kings and queen should speak. William Shakespeare shaped our reality.  Check it out: the BBC is giving you an excellent opportunity to revel in the matchless histories of Shakespeare with The Hollow Crown, which includes Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V.  (Follow links I’ve provided.)

A lot of rubbish has been written about the series already.  Even esteemed places like the New York Times don’t seem to know how to write about Shakespeare anymore (here and here) – any moment I expect them to begin complaining about how hard the language is.  Pretty much all of them, however, agree that this is a terrific, must-see series. Ben Whishaw has been praised for his Richard II, though I find it over-the-top, and Rory Kinnear‘s Bolingbroke underrated (see Clip #2). David Suchet (a.k.a. Hercule Poirot) is at Bolingbroke’s left, by the way, another good performance. Clip #3 features Patrick Stewart‘s John of Gaunt. Clip #4 Jeremy Irons as Henry IV. Clip #5 features Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff. And the final clip is Tom Hiddleston‘s Henry V.

It’s been at least a year or two since I’ve seen Shakespeare performed. The ear craves it. Tease your own with the excerpts, below. The full videos are available for listening at www.pbs.org for a limited time only. Take advantage of the opportunity.  Please. You owe it to yourself.

Postscript on 1/13:  I broke down and bought the DVDs on Amazon. Under $30.  Free shipping with a Prime account.  How could I forbid myself this little indulgence?

1.  Trailer for the series.

2.   Richard II  (A few seconds of “Great Performances” la-di-da at the beginning. It’s only a few seconds, really…)

3.   Richard II

Henry IV, Part 1

Henry IV, Part 2

Henry V