1983 BBC Television Shakespeare Production
This production, directed by Elijah Moshinsky, starred Richard Johnson as Cymbeline; Hugh Thomas as Cornelius; Claire Bloom as Queen; Helen Mirren as Imogen; Michael Pennington as Posthumus; Paul Jesson as Cloten; and Robert Lindsay as Iachimo.
Henry Fenwick, in his overview of “The Production” for the BBC booklet issued when this program was broadcast, quoted producer Sean Sutton as defending the play’s strengths, especially in terms of numerous characters and “complex subplots,” saying they allow “for much more ensemble playing in action” than other plays by Shakespeare. Sutton also praised director Elijah Moshinsky, who volunteered to direct this work (16) and who called the play “enormously intense [psychologically] and analytical in its revelation of very dark motives” (16–17). Moshinsky considered the play a tragedy but with a mystical conclusion. He saw its two key themes as (a) evil and (b) “moral ambiguity,” the latter personified by Pisanio. Moshinsky said the play involves both “objective and subjective level[s] of action,” as in its treatment of nightmares and dreams, allowing for a “nightmare realism” (17) that can be suggested through changes in lighting (17–18). Moshinsky chose to emphasize “more menacing perspectives in other camera angles,” often using mirrors, silhouettes, and “monologues … not said directly to the camera but slightly away from it at an angle” (18). He stressed the multiple identities of various characters, some with “double and triple natures.” Costume designer Dinah Collin explained her emphasis on seventeenth-century designs, the transformation of various kinds of cloth, and her efforts to achieve a Jacobean look for the Roman military (18–19). Set designer Barbara Gosnold explained her own efforts to achieve a Jacobean look for interiors, her focus on snow for exteriors, and her use of already existing “backcloths and gauzes” (19–20). Moshinsky explained his alterations of the text, with an emphasis on “lots of small speeches” made from Shakespeare’s long ones (20). Claire Bloom, as the Queen, played her as a kind of poisonous character—a role she actively sought to play, with an emphasis on the Queen’s rather unsubtle evil (21–22). Paul Jesson played Cloten as an arrogant aristocrat, with Moshinsky seeing Cloten as an exaggerated snob with an unpredictable streak and, like most of this play’s characters, with little psychological complexity (22–23). Concerning Iachimo, Moshinsky said that “his evil depends on having made the other person [Imogen] guilty” (23). Robert Lindsay, playing Iachimo, noted the need to make the part more subtle for television, with emphasis on the face rather than histrionic behavior, adding “what makes [Iachimo] so frightening is that he enjoys what he’s doing” (23–24). Michael Pennington, playing Posthumus, noted how many soliloquies this character speaks, the fact that jealousy is not uncommon among humans, and the fact that Posthumus is willing to forgive Imogen even though he believes she is guilty (25). Moshinsky explained that in order to make the final scene work, he broke it up into many smaller scenes, emphasizing close-ups and montages. He thought “the confusion of the play is like life” and called the work “bizarre and emotionally penetrating and psychologically intense” (26).
Henry E. Jacobs, briefly reviewing the BBC production shortly after it was broadcast, wrote that “Elijah Moshinsky breaks new ground” but then quickly suggested that by setting the play in a “generalized eighteenth-century milieu” Moshinsky had “blurred the essential distinctions between the worlds of the play: prehistoric Britain and Wales, Augustan Rome, and Renaissance Italy.” Jacobs did, however, credit Moshinsky with having “clearly established and sustained the distinction between urban settings and the hard pastoral world of Wales” in a production he considered full of “superb performances” and one that “manages to make a rarely produced and very difficult play work very well indeed.” Jacobs wrote that at the end of this tragicomedy “we leave” with an appropriate “mixture of smiles and tears” (6).
Also reviewing the production soon after it first appeared, Katherine Duncan-Jones said that settings and costumes based on “lucid visual images of the great Dutch Masters” produced some “delightful effects,” adding, however, that if “[t]hese images, and many more, are what is gained,” then “[w]hat is lost … is almost all the poetry, a good deal of the action, and all the sweet poignancy” of the play. She noted that “[e]xterior scenes are kept to a minimum, though the text would seem to call for many,” so that the “vital contrast between the court and the pastoral world is lost.” She felt that because “of its emphasis on painterly tableaux, this production is overwhelmingly static. Characters seem loath to rise from their high-backed chairs” and often “converse in whispers.” Duncan-Jones felt that the production’s “immobility cannot be entirely explained by the constraints of the medium,” adding that “[o]pportunities for close-up are often missed” and that, “Overall, the gentle, almost sentimental texture of the play is denied, in favour of an attempted intensity which becomes rather wearisome.” She asserted that “Moshinsky seems at times intent on adding more puzzles to an already puzzling text” and that the “cutting and rearranging of scenes in Act V does not make the story any plainer.” Ultimately, her reaction was unfortunately one of “boredom” (773).
J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their 1988 anthology Shakespeare on Television, quoted from an early review by G. M Pierce, who, suggesting that this Imogen almost seemed attracted to this Iachimo, also praised the acting of Bloom and Lindsay (289).
Roger Warren, in his 1989 volume on Cymbeline for the Shakespeare in Performance series (62–80), said the production alluded to the artwork of Rembrandt (62) and commented that at one point the “Jacobean setting perfectly catches the mood of the heroine [played by Helen Mirren], though it does not always have such evocative potential” (63). He called the Welsh landscape “extremely stylised,” saying it appeared “surreal” rather than “realistic,” with different visual styles also used for the two main plots (63). This strategy, he explained, was intended to emphasize duplicity and “moral ambiguity,” but he thought it often did so ineffectively, as in the presentation of Pisanio, who, in Warren’s opinion, is a less complex character than Moshinsky seems to think he is (64), and in general he felt that Moshinsky tried to “push the play towards a kind of moral ambiguity it does not possess” (64). Warren felt that many of Shakespeare’s lines are misread by the actors, thus underlining the “slipshod, hastily-thrown-together look and sound” of the whole BBC series (64). He called this particular production rushed (filming took a mere week), with “messy” results and with Mirren’s fumbling of her lines highlighted by Claire Bloom’s precision and overall effectiveness (65). Warren considered Bloom’s performance exemplary, unlike Richard Johnson’s as Cymbeline and faulted the production as a whole as too “severe,” with an excessive interest in “neuroticism” and “psychology” (65) and too much emphasis on the play’s supposed contrast of “objective” and “subjective” levels (66). He found some scenes excessive and overdone in aiming for a “tragic intensity” (67) that in fact results in “tragic over-loading” (68; see also 73). Moshinsky was blamed for distorting the play to emphasize his “dark approach,” one that even sometimes seems “pornographic” (70). Calling the burial episode unfortunately pruned and stylistically incoherent (74), Warren in general found many specific flaws in this production and discussed them in detail, including problems involving imperfect “continuity” (77), persistent “fragmentation,” and insufficient clarity (79). He argued that this version of the play “gives only an approximate idea of the play in performance” and often a confusing interpretation as well. He dwelled on these problems because he thought the performance was likely to be (and remain) widely seen (80).
Susan Willis, in her 1991 book The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (140–56), discussed the intentions behind, preparations for, and filming of this production in detail, noting its emphasis on fire and flames (140); its use of long shots, group shots, voice overs, and “sound bridges” (145–47); its stress on sexuality (149); and its use of mirrors as props (150). Commenting on cuts in words and changes in structure, so that characters often “act rather than talk” (154), she also discussed the use of tables as symbolic props (155) and the use of “repertory casting” (156).
Discussing the BBC production in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (338–39), Peter Cochran praised the painterly design, the superb lighting, the early seventeenth-century clothing, the understated but committed performances, and the excellent casting. He admired the music; noted the tragic rather than farcical emphasis (338–39); commended the actors in the smaller roles; and reported some humor at the end (339).
Robert White, commenting on this adaptation in a 2017 essay titled “Romance for Television: The BBC Cymbeline” and noting that it has long been the only full production of the play on film (71), described both the constraints (73–74) and opportunities (74–75) faced by directors for the BBC series, the latter including talented actors (75–76) and chances to provide “emotional subtlety” through the kinds of close-ups common on television (76–77). White thought music was used “to telling effect” throughout this production (77), then commented in detail on the filming of Act 4, scene 2 (78–80). He reported director Elijah Moshinsky’s own comments on the undertaking (80ff) and explored the unusual choice of Helen Mirren to play the crucial role of Imogen and the details of her performance, especially in 1.6 and 2.2 (82–87). Commenting that the “great challenge to directors of Cymbeline lies in handling the multiple disclosures of the ending” (87), White concluded by noting that Moshinsky did not cut much from the play’s conclusion, although he did cut heavily elsewhere (87).