The critics have loved his performance but former NSW premier
turned art critic Bob Carr has walked out of Kevin Spacey’s Richard 11 during interval.
Writing on his Thoughtlines website Carr says:
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| Bob Carr loonpond.blogspot.com |
“If you like Shakespeare, don’t see this. If you liked Kevin
Spacey in American Beauty (1999) don’t see this. If you like the fun of
Shakespeare’s villain Richard, Duke of Gloucester, don’t see it.”
Ouch!. But there’s more: "Spacey plays the cheapest and most obvious laughs, as if
entertaining a school-age audience “The crude over-acting by him and his
colleagues was reflected in too many shouted lines. Words are lost in the upper
registers. Resonance and enunciation are thrown away and Shakespeare’s words go
missing”
Wagner enthusiast Carr wasn’t too keen on Derek Jacobi’s
Lear either despite the production receiving high praise from The Guardian and
UK Telegraph.
" I, however, found it distinctly unmoving."
Even the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Antony and Cleopatra comes
in for a pasting from Bob
" With inadequate voices (that is, inadequate for these roles)
from Kathryn Hunter and Darrell D’Silva I found myself consulting the paperback
text on my knee when I could."
And in the comments section our Bob rips into those who
disagree.
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| Derek Jacobi in Lear |
Brendan W says " I do so love the implication that by enjoying
the Spacey version of Richard III that I am somehow dumb….Of the two plays I
saw this past weekend (Gross Und Klein and Richard III) I only enjoyed one, but
was treated to spectacular, albeit very different, performances on both
occasion"
Bob puts Brendan in his place: " You have seen TWO
professionally-performed Shakespeare and declare that one was the “definitive”?
When you have gone to the UK and seen productions by the RSC and The National
Theatre come back and engage."
Bob is a famous Civil War enthusiast which possibly explains his support for the disastrous Iraq war but he once managed to wangle a forward for his book out of Gore Vidal, an anti-Iraq invasion exponent.
He was premier for 10 years before suddenly resigning in
2005 and fleeing to the sheltered workshop for those with political contacts –the Macquarie
Bank also known as the Millionaires Factory.
Many said he was the ‘best premier
the Conservatives never had” who stuffed Sydney’s public transport, slashed legal aid and injury compensation and engaged in an unholy alliance with News Ltd tabloids
on phony Law & Order auctions, eventually making it difficult for many to get bail which filled the jails.
Bob fled with perfect
timing as three successive Labor premiers tried to hold together the shambles
left behind only to be turfed from office in a massive landslide to the Coalition last
March.
Currently he’s lecturing the State and Federal Labour Parties
on how to succeed but it's nice to know his lavish state pension and merchant bank sinecure keep him theatre tickets.
Recently Bob poured scorn on the Occupy Movement saying the “greedy incompetents on Wall Street” will be tamed by “parliamentary politics”.
The Macquarie Bank is one of the largest and most successful private banks on the planet with extensive dealings on Wall Street. The CEO received a $33M payment last year. With Carr at the Macquarie the amount of government contracts worth billions that flowed into Macquarie while Labor was still in power may have been pure co-incidence.
Maybe Bob's role in the Millionaire's Factory is to 'tame' them We live in hope.
