Shekhar Kapoor Is Back With Shakespeare

Paani is history.At least for now. Our most distinguished  Bollywood import Shekhar Kapoor has moved to London again for a tryst with Shakespeare.

He has directed the pilot for a new series on TNT entitled Will  which chronicles the early years of  Shakespeare in London. Shekhar’s familiarity with the Elizabethan era is now part of history. He directed by two big-screen bio-pics on Queen Elizabeth.

Will is far far brighter than Shekhar’s gloomy and dark Elizabethan bio-pics. The gaudy colours that assail us in the brief but tumultuous trailer are reminiscent of Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge .And  (b)rightly so: Will is written by Luhrmann’s writer Craig Pearce.

Shekhar adapts to the hedonistic 16^th century London with a vigour that is at once inviting and original. He is not afraid to convey the excessive extravagance of the Elizabethan era with a remarkable penchant for the raunchy .And the characters don’t seem apologetic about their hedonism.

The serial casts young drama-school student Laurie Davidson as Shakespeare. Davidson seems to understand the uncontrollable insane genius of Shakespeare and the wild impulses of 16^th century London almost instinctively. The trailer shows Laurie spontaneously grasping young Shakespeare’s impetuous brilliance .

The film splashes flamboyant colours ,a philandering free-for-all atmosphere and a grisly appetite for mob violence in one swift stroke of stunning visuals accompanied by a pounding rock-oriented background score that propels the characters into a world of catastrophic self-pleasuring.

The trailer conveys the demoniacal debauchery and unrestrained hedonism of 16^th century London with an expertise that makes us say….wow!

Shekhar, take a bow.

Apparently so impressed is Shekhar Kapoor with student-actor Laurie Davidson that he is “seriously toying” with re-casting Paani as a modern-day Romeo & Juliet with Davidson in the lead.