King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
by Edwin Sherin
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Actor: Douglass Watson, James Earl Jones, Paul Sorvino, Raul Julia, Rosalind CashDirector: Edwin Sherin
Brand: JONES,JAMES EARL
Cinematographer: Gene Searchinger
Producer: Bernard Gersten
Producer: Jac Venza
Producer: Joseph Papp
Producer: Victoria Hochberg
Producer: Virginia Kassel
Writer: William Shakespeare
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 175 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
DVD Review: The best Lear available!
Summary: 5 Stars
What a stunning performance of a difficult play! The cast is stellar, committed, gifted, and electrifying. It was a live performance and the energy is high. James Earl Jones plumbed the depths of this role; Rene Auberjonois was masterful. Raul Julia was just so evil and insidious. The sisters and other roles were fine. Only Paul Sorvino was miscast. This is THE Lear to have, to watch and to learn.DVD Review: The Best King Lear Performance I have Ever Seen
Summary: 5 Stars
James Earl Jones does an OUTSTANDING job as King Lear at one point even foaming at the mouth in his raving madness! Raul Julia, Rahay Shamay Rabah Amayn, is almost as good while he is being very very bad as Edmund. The play itself is utter Genius, second in plays only to Hamlet, and this performance with its live character in Central Park, captures an air of excitement that can only be captured on very very special occassions. DO NOT miss this one.DVD Review: "As Good As It Gets"
Summary: 5 Stars
The earlier reviewers here are certainly on target in calling this the finest "King Lear" on DVD. While the supporting cast is never less than adequate, James Earl Jones is by himself one titanic show. He's able to do something rarely seen, excel in all aspects of this most demanding of roles. Pride, bluster, anger, genuine rage, madness, growing self knowledge, and then, at last, tenderness, even delicacy - all of these are convincingly and movingly played by this large, majestic actor. He's giving what add up, in fact, to acting lessons as he plays this part so skillfully.DVD Review: Bravo for James Earl Jones and for Joe Papp
Summary: 5 Stars
I agree completely with all of the reviewers that this is indeed the best recording of "King Lear", not only because James Earl Jones is to my mind the definitive Lear (and because this cast and production magnify and clarify everything there is to be seen and heard in this play), but also because it is a recording of a live performance in a theater, rather than a movie or TV-studio taping. What a difference this makes! Movie versions are always rescripted, truncated and sometimes oddly cast to make a play more saleable. (Orson Welles' "Othello" and "Macbeth" are gorgeous pieces of cinema, but they are much more Welles than Will.) The productions of the 1980s BBC series stick pretty close to the text and happily have made the entire Shakespeare canon available for home viewing. But their visual and aural effect is claustrophobic, and the colors are fading. It was a wonderful change for me to experience the sweep and power of Papp's "King Lear" DVD, proving that, in the end, the best venue for a Shakespeare play is the one it was written for: the stage. Fortunately for those of us who could not be at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in the summer of 1974, Joseph Papp had the historical sense to take on the hassle and expense of preserving this marvelous production on videotape. Would that there were enough of a market out there to encourage more theater angels to do the same!DVD Review: OF ALL THE KING LEAR'S THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST RECORDED
Summary: 5 Stars
and that includes Ran.
In order of preference from my personal library:
This Joe Papp/ James Earle JOnes production is tops
then the early Peter Brooks/ Orson Welles tremendous adaptation
THen Olivier's gentler production (Olivier's best recorded Shakespeare)
THen the 1970's cardboard BBC production
THen the Ian Holms version
This James Earle Jones presentation is the best of all, despite a few technical flaws of miking and camera angle (I cringe that they have no footage of his final "Howl, howl, howl, howl; Oh! Ye be men of stone" entry- the greatest line in the play yet we see him not!)
Any other complaints here recorded - including hair style! are irrelevant and trivial. In any way this is the best production you can get of this intense play. Okay, well, Sorvino could have had a better wig and fake beard, and a stronger voice as an opera singer (which stands him in good stead during the eye-outing) but remember the actors were playing more to the enormous CEntral PArk audience than to the cameras. For this reason alone the subtlety of their presentation is especially remarkable, even if broad stage blocking is required, and minimal sets. THIS IS A LIVE PRESENTATION and makes you recall how great our world class theatre ONCE was.
Please do remember this is a live production. It is great to see Mr. Jones practicing lines while dressing during the miserable Hal Holbrook introduction. This is LIVE THEATRE, yet Mr. JOnes carries his lines tremendously. There is no memorizing lines scene by scene like for a movie. He had hundreds of lines to remember, and he makes each word TRUE and real and meaningful as no other actor does despite all sorts of grimacing. This is the younger Jones, long before becoming the voice of CNN, etc. He is a force of nature and of spirit and of soul and of INTELLECT such as Welles and such as we shall never again see.
It is a great production as well for the young and vibrant Raul Julia and REne D'Aubojoinois (SPELLING?) as the half-brother sons of Gloucester. Incredible acting by both whose bright light outshines ANYTHING in their later very fine television and cinema opus. We see Julia as a passionate male lead rather than world weary Mr. Addams.
All in all a great interpretation and a faithful presentation of this complex play. Get it. Compare it to the others, and watch which one you reach for when in a King Lear kind of a mood.
kindly overlook my limited superlatives and get this production.
Description of King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
The formidable James Earl Jones reprises his critically-acclaimed King Lear in this television adaptation of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production. Of Jones's performance, The Washington Post wrote, "Jones has the qualities of mind, body, voice and movement which enable him to make us care deeply about the spectacle of an old man brought to grief by his folly. The magnitude Jones project is not a matter of mere physical size, but of largeness of soul."Brilliant performances from an amazing cast highlight this piece of modern theater history. James Earl Jones stars as Lear in this digitally remastered recording of a live performance in the park. (If you've ever wished you could see one of Joseph Papp's legendary New York Shakespeare Festival productions, this is your chance.) The crowd reactions add a layer to the play by helping to bring the excellent production to life. The direction is vibrant, keeping both a reverence for Shakespeare's work and the importance of entertaining a crowd in mind. The astonishing supporting cast includes Rosalind Cash, Paul Sorvino, Rene Auberjonois, and Raul Julia, and a remarkable performance by Douglass Watson as Kent. --Ali Davis
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