Shakespeare
'The challenge is to make something of not very much': Iestyn Davies on Britten's OberonThursday, 08 June 2017
Tomorrow Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream will begin a short run at the Snape Maltings, Suffolk in a new production directed by Netia Jones and conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth. It will mark the high point of the Aldeburgh Festival’s summer... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe review - Emma Rice goes out with a bangThursday, 25 May 2017
The Globe’s artistic director Emma Rice has made no secret of her desire to go out with a bang, in this, the final season of her brutally truncated tenure at the company. With this Twelfth Night she stages a departure with bells (and whistles, and... Read more... |
Richard III review - Greg Hicks gruesomely impressive as power-crazed rulerSaturday, 20 May 2017
There may never have been a time when Shakespeare’s Richard III did not have contemporary relevance, but surely never more than it does right now. And it’s to the credit of director Mehmet Ergen that this production doesn’t go to town on it, but... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe review - 'too much brouhaha'Friday, 28 April 2017
“Everything in extremity”. That announcement that the Capulet party is about to begin could just as well serve to describe Daniel Kramer’s Romeo and Juliet as a whole. Opening the Globe's new season, it will provoke reactions as conflicting as the... Read more... |
Lady Macbeth review - memorably nastyThursday, 27 April 2017
The Scottish play’s traces are faint in this bloody, steamy tale of feminist psychosis. Based on Nikolai Leskov’s Dostoevsky-commissioned novel Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, its 1865 setting is transferred from Tsarist Russia to Northumberland.... Read more... |
Stoller Hall Opening, Chetham's School of Music, ManchesterMonday, 24 April 2017
The opening of a new concert hall offers two options for opinionizing: the venue itself – or the performances in it? Review the acoustics – or the music? It has to be a mixture of the two, in the end. Chetham’s School of Music, in Manchester, has... Read more... |
'What did you do?' Actors reveal their Shakespearean secretsSunday, 23 April 2017
Much of the brilliance of Shakespeare lies in the openness, or ambiguity, of his texts. Whereas a novelist will often describe a character, an action or a scene in the most minute detail, Shakespeare knew that his scenarios would only be fully... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, Barbican review - Cheek by Jowl's latest wavers in toneMonday, 10 April 2017
This is a well-travelled Winter’s Tale. Declan Donnellan has long been a director who's as much at home abroad as he is in the UK, and with co-production support here coming pronouncedly from Europe (there's American backing, too), Cheek by Jowl... Read more... |
Roman Tragedies, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, BarbicanSaturday, 18 March 2017
It felt good to be encountering Shakespeare at his most political with a world event to smile about, for once (hailing, of course, from this brilliant Dutch company's homeland). It felt even better to emerge six hours later spellbound and deeply... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, West Yorkshire PlayhouseMonday, 13 March 2017
Amy Leach’s energetic Romeo and Juliet is fast, furious and a little breathless, the setting transposed from Verona to a fairly grim contemporary Leeds. Think West Yorkshire Side Story. Leach’s starting point was hearing about conflict resolution in... Read more... |
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Old VicWednesday, 08 March 2017
To the list of abiding theatrical partnerships one must surely add Tom Stoppard and the director David Leveaux. From his Tony-winning revival of The Real Thing onwards to Jumpers and Arcadia, all of which played both London and Broadway, Leveaux has... Read more... |
Othello, Tobacco Factory, BristolMonday, 06 March 2017
Intimacy is a mixed blessing: Richard Twyman’s close-up exploration of sex and violence in his production of Othello for Bristol’s Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory takes the audience on a gripping emotional journey, but one that is at times almost... Read more... |
