If you like your Shakespeare straight up, try this comedy of mistaken identity. The verse is well-spoken by an English cast under the direction of Trevor Nunn, who formerly ran the Royal Shakespeare Company. But be warned. For an antic farce about a shipwrecked girl, Viola (Imogen Stubbs), who disguises herself as a boy, Cesario, and falls in love with a duke, Orsino (Toby Stephens), who loves a countess, Olivia (Helena Bonham Carter), who loves Cesario, not knowing that he is a she, Twelfth Night is surprisingly stodgy stuff. Bonham Carter and Stubbs, who looks fetching in a mustache, find raffish fun in the gender bending, and Stephens, the son of Maggie Smith, has real star shine. But Nunn's cautious approach leaves such fine actors as Ben Kingsley and Nigel Hawthorne straining for laughs. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet may go too far in adapting the Bard for film. But Nunn's error with this comedy is worse: He keeps the lid on.

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."