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Top 10 How Bard Can It Be...?

All the world’s a stage, of course, and so Shakespeare’s finest works have appeared in many weird and wonderful ways. Not least Gnomeo & Juliet, a grass-roots version (ahem) of his tragic romance. Here, then, are the best adaptations that beg the question: how Bard can it be...?

The Top 10 Films

Throne of Blood (1957) - Macbeth

The Scottish play is transported to feudal Japan by the great Akira Kurosawa, who would also draw on Shakespearean inspiration three decades later for Ran (based on King Lear), then the most expensive Japanese film ever made. Here, Macbeth and Duncan are Samurai commanders Washizu and Miki, while Asaji (Lady Macbeth) is even more proactive in getting her hands bloodied, and even more frantic when those stains won’t come out.

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10 Things I Hate About You (1999) - The Taming of the Shrew

It looks a lot like a standard teen comedy, but this entertaining ensemble romp boasts a sharp tongue and strong performances, and you rather suspect the Bard would have approved. Shrew’s whiff of misogyny translates perfectly to the classrooms and bleachers of a Seattle high school, and the film showcased break-out performances from Julia Stiles as Kat (Katherina) Stratford and the late Heath Ledger as Patrick (Petruchio) Verona.

Rent

Forbidden Planet (1956) - The Tempest

Prospero’s island is one of the more outlandish locales on the Shakespearean map, so it’s fitting that the action spins 16 light years and two centuries away to the planet Altair IV. Leslie Nielsen (before all the spoofy horsing around) is a dashing Commander who discovers the only survivors of a failed colonisation mission: Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), his beautiful daughter (Anne Francis). Oh, and Robbie the Robot. Danger, Frank Drebin, danger!

Rent

The Banquet (2006) - Hamlet

Another dramatic shift eastwards and back in time finds something rotten in the state of 10th Century China. The royal house (the shattered Tang Dynasty) is as full of political intrigue, but the Oedipal angst of Crown Prince Wu Luan (Hamlet) has been transmuted to plain ol’ jealous betrayal, with the Gertrude character now much younger, only the Prince’s step-mum, and in the fragrantly delectable form of Zhang Ziyi (Memoirs of a Geisha; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

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A Thousand Acres (1997) - King Lear

This adaptation of Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel – itself unashamedly based on Shakespeare’s play – finds the aging patriarch as Larry Cook (Jason Robards), an imposing Iowa farmer who carves up his thousand acre plot, gets furious with former darling daughter Caroline (Cordelia – Jennifer Jason Leigh) for going AWOL, and then bitterly resentful of her sisters, Ginny (Goneril – Jessica Lange) and Rose (Regan – Michelle Pfeiffer), who did take him up on the deal.

Rent

All Night Long (1961) - Othello

Yet another reimagined tragedy, and here the noble Moor is a bandleader in 60s London, (wonderfully) renamed Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris), married to retired singer Delia Lane (Desdemona – Marti Stevens), who’s being tempted back into action by scheming drummer Johnnie Cousin (Patrick McGoohan, excellent in the Iago role). Jazz luminaries Dave Brubeck, Charlie Mingus, Tubby Hayes (and many more besides) play themselves and provide a sublime soundtrack.

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West Side Story (1961) - Romeo & Juliet

Perhaps the most famous adaptation, West Side Story began life as a 1957 Broadway musical written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, hurling the blood-feud hatred of the Montague and Capulet families into 50s New York, and the gang rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks. Four successful years later, and the film version saw star-crossed lovers Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) in tuneful turmoil, collecting 10 Oscars in the process.

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Carry on Cleo (1965) - Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar

Mangling two of Shakespeare’s Roman epics together, this is tenth in the Carry On canon, when the cast & crew were still bursting vim, vigour and vulgarity, and just enough cheeky seaside-postcard winkery to get away with it. Sid James (Mark Antony), Charles Hawtrey (Seneca), Amanda Barrie (Cleopatra) are in fine form, but Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar walks off with the film and the best ever Carry On line: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!”

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Romeo Must Die (2000) - Romeo & Juliet

“These violent delights have violent ends”, and never has that phrase rung more true than in this noisy, martial arts actioner that plays fast and loose with the plot. Ex-cop Han Sing (Romeo – Jet Li) busts out of a Hong Kong prison and heads for Oakland, California, where he tracks his brother’s killers among the rival Chinese and black gangs, and meets Trish (Juliet – the late, lamented hip-hop singer Aaliyah), who's daughter to a mob boss.

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Shakespeare Retold (2005) - four plays

The Bard and Auntie Beeb have been happy bedfellows for many a moon, and the fruitful relationship continues with this quartet of superbly topical adaptations: Macbeth (James McAvoy) works in the kitchen of a celebrity chef, his wife (Keeley Hawes) is the Maitre’d; Sarah Parish and Damien Lewis take Much Ado About Nothing’s verbal jousting into a local TV news studio; there’s a political spin for Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell in The Taming of the Shrew; while Bill Paterson and Imelda Staunton celebrate their daughter’s engagement at a Centre Parcs-esque facility in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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Darren Bignell