Lovely play, lovely characters and foremost: lovely language. All non-Brittish English speaking whiners can and should take some time to properly learn their mother tongue and some of the rich dialectal variations of the same before revealing their ignorance in the matter. As a citizen in a Nordic country with English not by far a language I even use on a daily basis, I'm having no problem whatsoever following the lines purely by listening to the play. How the hell can somebody obviously residing in a country with English as a national language have the nerve complaining about shortcomings in the English subs? Seriously?
If truly a prompt is needed for the obtuse English speaking viewer from a colony to make him/her/it understand and enable the same to follow the plot, the problem lies solely with the bigot in question.
Plot summary
The National Theatre and Out Of Joint co-production of Goldsmith's comedy, recorded live on stage in Bath, after it's premiere at the Lyttelton theatre in London.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Movie Reviews
Deciphering England's native "English speech" to privileged Karens outside GB?
EXCELLENT rendition of a great play with some minor deficiencies
The characters, setting, costumes, photography, direction are ALL EXCELLENT in this version. What isn't?
The playback version doesn't work with all US players (we found one that worked). I thought the 5 acts were specified but they aren't delineated in the playback. (See my Message Board post on this subject for more info.) AND I thought that subtitles were an available option (which in set-up they seemed to be) BUT we couldn't get them to work.
We were showing this film for our group of play readers in a university group for retired faculty (the KU Endacott Society)-- our group had just finished reading the play and were viewing this PLUS sharing it with members of the far larger Society who'd like to see it.
Deciphering England's native "English speech" is not easy for everyone. It WOULD have been a little easier for those of us who'd previously spent 4-6 hours reading various parts in the play.
IF you previously have some acquaintance with this play (having read it, acted in it, etc.) or familiarity with native English speech, this could be a delightful experience. But for many?some? people lacking that, it could be frustrating.
The settings, costumes, actors, direction were ALL excellent.
JMO