The natural period of adjustment to any play by Shakespeare is here apt to take a little longer: the Elizabethan blank verse has been transplanted, with minor revisions, into an alternate-universe England circa the 1930s. (Marlowe's "Come live with me and be my love ..." is sung to a swinging big-band beat. "Now is the winter of our discontent ..." is taken to a men's-room urinal. "My kingdom for a horse!" is cried from a disabled army jeep.) In truth, the period of adjustment may take longer than the running time. Even if not, it may be an adjustment to resignation instead. Or adjustment to despair. Annette Bening, one of two Hollywoodites in the cast, acquits herself well, under the circumstances. As do a number of others, especially by comparison with the dastardly protagonist of Ian McKellen. He's stuck back (or would it be forward?) in Victorian melodrama, lacking only enough length in his mustache to twirl it. Robert Downey, Jr., Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Adrian Dunbar, Jim Broadbent, Maggie Smith; directed by Richard Loncraine. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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