lions in winter

Our play-reading group, having decided to venture into Shakespeare's history plays with the one of earliest chronological setting, King John (and what a dynamite play it's proving to be: pity it isn't staged more), has decided the logical non-Shakespeare to follow it up with is James Goldman's The Lion in Winter, which treats some of the same characters at an earlier date.

That isn't on Kindle, so it was copies of the printed play for B. and me to read from that I'd gone out to libraries last week to find. (The trade edition has a dedication, "For Bill." You know who that is, don't you?) And while I was at it, to also borrow DVDs of both the screen adaptations.

Both of them? Yes. Besides the famous Academy Award-winning 1968 film with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, there was a 2003 tv movie starring Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. Wow, I thought when I saw those names, I have to see that. So we did. B. and I watched them both over the last couple of evenings.

Both movies were scripted by Goldman, so the script differences are not tremendous. The 2003 is as much a remake of the 1968 as it is of the stage play. In both versions, the outstanding performance is clearly of the Eleanor (Hepburn and Close), but their styles don't differ tremendously. Hepburn is somewhat more brittle, Close more conniving, but that's their personas.

The Henrys, however, do differ a great deal. Henry was 50 at the time the play is set, which was considered old at the time, we're told; O'Toole was only 36 (and young enough to be Hepburn's son: Eleanor was a decade Henry's senior) while Stewart was 63, and they both look, and act, their age. Stewart, though he's Patrick Stewart, doesn't boom anywhere near as much as O'Toole did. O'Toole is filled with lust for life and seems determined to roust every minute, while Stewart is capable of getting weary. The net result is that Stewart is more believable in dismay at his sons' rebellion, while O'Toole is more believable in his response, which is to determine to marry his mistress and start over with a new family.

The 2003 is not only longer in running time, nearly 3 hours, but more spaciously paced: the characters pause and ruminate quietly more than in 1968, making the outbursts more dramatic. In general, the 1968 is more intense, particularly in the first half, while the 2003, though more relaxed in the first half, is more layered and varied.

I thought the 2003, though somewhat lax at the start, was the better performed overall. In 1968 Richard was Anthony Hopkins and Philip was Timothy Dalton; both were making their feature film debuts and both seemed to me to still need seasoning. The 1968 cast also includes several veterans of the then-recent The Prisoner, including Geoffrey, Alais (pronounced Alice here and Alees in 2003), and William Marshall. The only supporting cast member in 2003 I was familiar with was Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Philip, the outstanding supporting performance in either movie.

Now we have to sit down and read the play, as soon as we've wrapped up King John.