Learning on ScreenTwelfth Night
- Synopsis
- Television broadcast of Bronson’s production of the play. Relayed live from the Phoenix Theatre, London, with Peggy Ashcroft as Viola and Michael Redgrave as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
- Language
- English
- Country
- Great Britain
- Medium
- Television
- Transmission details
- 2 Jan 1939 at 20:30 (Channel: BBC)
- Duration
- 150 mins
- Availability
- No copy extant
Credits
- Producer
- Bronson James Albery; Michel Saint-Denis
- Writer
- William Shakespeare
- Cast
Additional Details
- Theatre
- Phoenix Theatre, London
- Production type
- Television and Radio Drama
- Historical period
- Elizabethan
- Plays
- Twelfth Night
- Subjects
- Drama
- Keywords
- Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Notes
- General
- Peggy Ashcroft appears on television for the first time.
- Reviews
- Anonymous reviewer from The Times: "The second play to be televised in its entirety from a theatre, Twelfth Night at the Phoenix, presented far greater difficulties than the first. Mr Priestley’s When We Are Married is a farce seeking only laughter [...] The joke was clear, and it sufficed that the wheeling cameras caught all its principal points by registering every comic expression which had something of importance to contribute. But Twelfth Night is more than a joke and its lyric beauty defies the vigilance of mechanical eyes which alter their range minute by minute.
The impression given was one of extreme restlessness. Viola was now a tiny figure scarcely distinguishable from half-a-dozen others equally diminutive and now rather more than life-size, taking up half the screen and hiding the balcony at her back. So with all the others. The result was to falsify the fluid grace of the production and to tempt viewers who were not preoccupied with the technical wonders of the apparatus to close their eyes and to treat the affair as broadcast [radio] drama. Then there was much to enjoy. ('Television from a theatre’, 3 January 1939, p. 8)
A roundup of reviews has been collected by the ‘ScreenPlays: Theatre on British Television’ project, see http://screenplaystv.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/from-the-theatre-1936-1939/ (accessed 9/2011)
Production Company
- Name
BBC
- Notes
- The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Record Stats
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