Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, RSC, Barbican review - visually ravishing with an undercurrent of violenceWednesday, 11 December 2024
Hermia is a headbutting punk with a tartan fetish, Oberon looks like Adam Ant and Lysander appears to have stumbled out of a Madness video. Yet Eleanor Rhode’s exuberant A Midsummer Night’s Dream – which has transferred from a triumphant run at... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Orange Tree Theatre review - perfectly pitched sad and merry musical mayhemSaturday, 30 November 2024
It's all too easy to underplay the melancholy of Shakespeare's comedy of divided twins, misplaced – sometimes narcissistic – love, drunken frolics and a Puritan given his comeuppance. Tom Littler's decision to present the action in a very English... Read more... |
Lear, Barbican Theatre review - a very stormy saga, Korean-styleSaturday, 05 October 2024
What do the cult TV show Squid Game and National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Lear have in common? Oddly, a K-Pop producer, Jung Jae-il, who has created additional music for Lear.Korean opera traditionally tells its stories via a hybrid blend of... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Globe review - Egypt in sign language, Rome in pale forceMonday, 19 August 2024
More surely than any other London stage, the Globe has opened up our theatrical perspective on different languages. Its triumphant “Globe to Globe” 2012 season presented the Shakespeare canon in 37 different linguistic interpretations.Among those... Read more... |
The Micro Golden Age of Mid Eighties Fantasy FilmsSaturday, 03 August 2024
“When we hear the formula ‘once upon a time,’ or any of its variants,” wrote Angela Carter in her introduction to her Book of Fairy Tales, “we know in advance that what we are about to hear isn’t going to pretend to be true. We say to children: Don’... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's Globe review - riotous comedy jars with the bitter pill of the production's messageWednesday, 19 June 2024
A recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 2.1 million people in the UK had been victims of domestic abuse in the year ending March 2023. So it makes sense that director Jude Christian has addressed this tricky, troubling Shakespeare... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Duke of York's Theatre review - doomy and deathly, and much-hypedMonday, 27 May 2024
One of Shakespeare's longest plays gets gets served up fast and filleted courtesy the director of the moment Jamie Lloyd, who is second to none when it comes to revealing the hidden performance strengths of various (and very varied) stars.Last year... Read more... |
Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe review - Michelle Terry riffs with punk bravadoThursday, 23 May 2024
There’s a fierce, dark energy to the Globe’s new Richard III that I don’t recall at that venue for a fair while. The drilled cast dances seemed more frenzied, and there are more of them, and for once let’s start with a shout-out for James Maloney’s... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - burlesque overwhelms the darker notes in this mixed revivalFriday, 10 May 2024
In Shakespeare's day theatre was regarded as "wanton" by those of a Puritan disposition who feared boys dressed as girls could engender wicked thoughts of same-sex love in players and audience. But such ideas are, of course, part of the story,... Read more... |
The Merchant of Venice 1936, Criterion Theatre review - radical revamp with a passionate agendaMonday, 26 February 2024
It’s an unhappy time to be staging Shakespeare’s problematic play, given its antisemitic content, so hats off to adaptor-director Brigid Larmour and actor Tracy-Ann Oberman for persevering with this updated version, now in the West End. Their... Read more... |
Othello, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - 21st century interpretation delivers food for thoughtThursday, 08 February 2024
Detective Chief Inspector Othello leads a quasi-paramilitary team of Metropolitan Police officers investigating gang activity in Docklands. With a chequered past now behind him, he has reformed and has the respect of both the team he leads and his... Read more... |
Richard Schoch: Shakespeare's House review - nothing ill in such a templeThursday, 25 January 2024
Richard Schoch, in the subtitle of his new book on Shakespeare’s House, promises something big: “a window onto his life and legacy.” To the disgruntled reader – pushed to the brink by one too many new books on Shakespeare, each nervously... Read more... |
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