The film had a legendary cast acting the scenes separately with the best takes making it into the final product. The only thing wrong with this production is that it’s not the film. Laurel Moglen’s Alais is one of those top-and-bottom things: top, because she nailed the character bottom, because Alais is so weepily cringe that I wanted to pull earbuds whenever she started talking. Molina would be my second pick for his solid but toned-down Henry II. I felt that she approached Hepburn’s acting in the 1968 film. I think the best performance here was Chalfant as Eleanor. Still, it’s very entertaining, if a bit more lightweight than it need be. As the original title is “The Lion In Winter: A Comedy In Two Acts”, I suppose that was intentional, though I feel it was a mistake. The constant need to be oh-so-clever saps any building emotional pressure. The play is packed with excellent and memorable dialogue, but to its own detriment.

It seems to consciously run on mood whiplash. Comedy and drama, well done pathos and witty repartee, flip back and forth every few minutes. The Lion In Winter is a good but strange play. By imagining the inner lives of Henry, Eleanor, and their sons, John, Geoffrey, and Richard, Goldman created the quintessential drama of family strife and competing ambitions, a work that gives visceral, modern-day relevance to the intrigues of Angevin England.Combining keen historical and psychological insight with delicious, mordant wit, the stage play has become a touchstone of today's theater scene, and Goldman's screenplay for the 1968 film adaptation won him an Academy Award. Keenly self-aware and motivated as much by spite as by any sense of duty, Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine maneuver against each other to position their favorite son in line for succession. In James Goldman's classic play The Lion in Winter, domestic turmoil rises to an art form. These are themes as much at home in our time as they were in the twelfth century. Insecure siblings fighting for their parents' attention bickering spouses who can't stand to be together or apart adultery and sexual experimentation even the struggle to balance work and family.

The lion in winter by james goldman