Between staying out later than intended on Saturday and not really having a handle on my sleep pattern post-caffeine yet, I wasn't entirely feeling up to the level of attention reading the play would have required. I found this online with the sort of cast I've come to expect from the RSC, and thus have something to show for the day. I'll admit I found the parallel plots a little bit hard to follow even in the synopsis, but the characters and their interactions put me in mind of a sort of veiled dry-run for Hamlet. The players are somewhat shuffled but the themes of madness, vengeance and family friction, ending in a very similar pile of bodies killed variously by poison, duel and suicide (and in this case, heartbreak).
In stark contrast to the other Shakespeare adaptations I've watched for this project so far, the set and staging for this one is minimal almost to the point of being replicable on a stage. The outdoor scenes are actually outside, but that aside, court scenes are laid out so that there is never a back turned to to the camera and we watch from a very theatrical-audience-like perspective with closeups being used very sparingly in the early scenes of the play. From the available interviews it seems this was a deliberate and specific decision, with the intention of placing emphasis on the script to carry the story and give the audience the same opportunity for imagination as a scantly-dressed stage production would.
I do intend on reading the script at some point, probably in the not-too distant future since I have it out from the library at the moment. There's certainly a good mix of female characters to choose from, and while none of them are leaping out as perfect for me the way Imogen did, Goneril seems to offer a lot of scope and challenge as a more mature and calculating character while still having a place in the younger generation of her family.
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