Crime of a rhyme

Alistair McGowan performed as Shakespeareâ™s Romeo in the style of someone who hadnâ™t learned his lines

11 April 2012

Separated at birth, part 362 (b), in which I publish more information about the secret family histories of the stars.

First, I can exclusively reveal that Pink Floyd (famous for "Brain Damage") are related to Keith Floyd (famous for liver damage), that the slightly deaf singer James Brown was introduced to "soil" music by his garden-crazy brother Capability, and that Chris Evans is the bastard son of Dame Edith Evans and Sir Geraint Evans (well, the bastard bit certainly sounds plausible anyway).

Furthermore, my long-held belief that Siegfried and Vidal Sassoon were brothers has gained added weight now that Siegfried's revelatory homosexual letters have been released.

My theory is that the camp brothers led the Allies to victory in the First World War with their moraleboosting mixture of patriotic poetry and hot-wax split-end treatments for flyaway hair that really shines, and that Siegfried wrote his most moving lines after witnessing the terrible day when Vidal dropped thick clouds of peroxide fumes over Berlin. The poem's title? It makes you go blond, you know.

I recently discovered that Mark Lamarr wasn't born with the surname that he now uses, and judging from his evident dyslalia, I reckon he could be genetically linked to Jonathan Woss. Their timbre, pitch, and dodgy enunciation are virtually identical, so you can well imagine that his contribution to last night's

From Bard to Verse (BBC3) was about as felicitous as hiring a sandblaster to perform one of Mozart's compositions for glass harmonica.

This new nightly series is attempting to bridge the yawning chasm between Shakespeare and BBC3's youth audience by serving up the poet's work like convenience food, "packaged into bite-size chunks and performed by the UK's hottest acting and comedy talent".

But the result was depressingly like watching a succession of Rada audition pieces, with over-the-top histrionics, unnatural facial contortions, and stilted speech patterns, although at least we were spared the traditional sight of men in tights into which there had apparently just been a wholesale delivery of root vegetables.

Last night's theme was the pleasures and pains of love, and some of the casting was clearly intended to take the viewers' minds off the poetry by attracting their eyes to the performers.

Lucy Gaskell's Tamora rolled invitingly around on the floor in jeans that were Titus Andronicus, while fans of Alistair McGowan doubtless enjoyed his clever interpretation of Romeo, performed in the style of someone who hasn't learned his lines properly and therefore has to read from an autocue.

However, Lisa Riley (the salad dodger from You've Been Framed) was cruelly given a man's role as Troilus, when surely she'd have been better suited to the famous speech by Jacques (as in Hattie); and watching her deliver it atop a bus reminded me that I recently saw Vanessa Feltz on the back of a bus (an appropriate place for a poster advertising her dire radio show).

Ms Feltz has clearly been living the life of Riley since her painful love split, because she once again looks as though she's discovered the joys of lard but has forgotten to throw up. Why, it's a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and I'm loving it.

Although the backdrops to the scenes were modern (ranging from a pub to an empty theatre), the performances were doggedly conventional, or so it seemed at first.

But just when I'd got used to the dullness of the delivery, my ears were assaulted by something truly execrable as three Ali G soundalikes embarked on a rap version of It Was a Lover and his Lass that will assuredly be wheeled out on Before They Were Famous in 2024 ( assuming that one of them ever achieves stardom, which is highly unlikely), so the audience can shriek with laughter at each blinging streetwise "Hey nonino".

As for Fraser James delivering Benedick's "I did never think to marry" speech in a diner, there was plenty of ham on the menu, and Shakespeare must certainly have been spinning in his grave, because his verse simply doesn't need gimmicks. No. The Bard knew how to write good.

He knew that prepositions were not words to end sentences with. That parenthetical remarks (however relevant) were unnecessary. That foreign words and phrases were never apropos or le mot juste. And that analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

Admittedly, some of the interpretations did show a sympathy for the text, and sonnet 138 was beautifully read. But lifting short speeches from long plays, then citing them out of context will invariably result in a loss of literary potency, and the moral of this exercise is that if you're worried about an audience's short attention span, then don't offer them Shakespeare at all.

I know I often berate the TV industry for neglecting the arts, but this is mere tokenism from Baby Cow Productions, and the distracting and often brutal editing style would surely be better suited to an earthier kind of poetry, such as the verse I once heard a very drunk John Gielgud recite at a party: "May your bleeding piles torment you, and corns grow on your feet, and crabs the size of horse turds, get on your balls and eat.

And when you're old and feeble, a syphilitic wreck, may your head fall through your a**hole, and break your f****** neck."

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