Anybody who has the slightest interest in Shakespeare and acting will find this series to be a riveting experience. It's not often you have the opportunity to watch actors actually rehearse and experiment as they prepare for a role, and in Playing Shakespeare you are able to watch some of the finest actors of our generation do just that. There is nothing staged about any of this either, as Barton will stop them, and ask them to try something again, but this time do it this way. What I found truly amazing was the apparent ease with which each of them were able to take his direction and do something completely different from what they had done previously.
However, by far the best thing this series does is make Shakespeare more accessible. Far too many people put him up on a pedestal and worship his work to the extent that they lose touch with the fact that it was written as popular entertainment in its day. They're full of sex, violence, coarse humour, and high passion, all of which should be as equally entertaining to today's audience as for the one for whom it was written. Barton and his actors bring Shakespeare back to a human level, but without sacrificing any of the magic and beauty of the language and the poetry inherit to the work the way many modern "realistic" productions do.
It doesn't matter if you've hated Shakespeare since high school, or loved his plays all your life — watching Playing Shakespeare will open your eyes and allow you to look on the material as if it were brand new. The program may be 25 years old, but the ideas it expresses and puts into action are just as fresh and exciting today as they were then. This is brilliant television and great theatre.
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