Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Young VicFriday, 24 February 2017
“The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green for lack of tread are undistinguishable.” Titania may mourn the landscape withered by her conflict with Oberon, but games and mazes hold no interest for director... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, National TheatreThursday, 23 February 2017
Everybody’s a little bit gay in Simon Godwin’s giddy new Twelfth Night at the National Theatre. From Andrew Aguecheek, vibrant in candy-coloured check, cuddling up to Sir Toby, and Antonio’s aggressive affection to Sebastian, to Orsino’s passionate... Read more... |
Richard III, Schaubühne Berlin, BarbicanFriday, 17 February 2017
Hated the Schaubühne Hamlet (same lead actor, same director as this latest Shakespeare auf Deutsch); loved Ivo van Hove's Toneelgroep Kings of War, with Hans Kesting's Richard III on the highest level alongside the Henrys V and VI. Thomas Ostermeier... Read more... |
Judi Dench: All the World's Her Stage, BBC TwoSaturday, 31 December 2016
The hyperbole began as soon as the voiceover did: “For most of us Judi Dench is M…” So much for Bernard Lee. The implication was that if you can remember him, then Judi Dench: All the World’s Her Stage was not for you. After all, she played James... Read more... |
Love's Labour's Lost/Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 16 December 2016
“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” A sudden cold breeze blows through the endless summer afternoon of Love’s Labour's Lost in the play’s final moments. Death enters Shakespeare’s Edenic garden and innocence is lost. But what... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Christopher LuscombeTuesday, 06 December 2016
When Shakespeare visits the bearpit of the West End, it is usually in the company of a big name: Judi Dench, Sheridan Smith, Martin Freeman. This Christmas the bard enters the Theatre Royal, Haymarket without any such support. And there is a... Read more... |
'Hamlet’s actors are kings of infinite space'Thursday, 01 December 2016
“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, Were it not that I have bad dreams…” 2016, with all its protectionist voting, has been the year I’ve taken my production of Hamlet – with just six actors, a sofa and a drum... Read more... |
Shakespeare Trilogy, Donmar at King's CrossThursday, 24 November 2016
If you are new to the Donmar Warehouse all-female stagings of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Henry IV – 2012 and 2014 respectively – the biggest surprise is not so much that these highly masculine dramas are performed entirely by women. It is their... Read more... |
King Lear, RSC, BarbicanFriday, 18 November 2016
At the conclusion of a year in which Britishness has come so resoundingly to the fore of the national debate – and with a play that at the time of its writing, 1605-6, was engaging with that concept no less urgently – the first impression made by... Read more... |
10 Questions for Actor David TroughtonMonday, 14 November 2016
David Troughton (b.1950), a familiar face on television and a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, is a versatile actor. His most recent RSC appearance before Gloucester displayed his talent for comedy: he was a funny and energetic Simon Eyre in... Read more... |
Cymbeline, RSC, BarbicanTuesday, 08 November 2016
“Britain is a world by itself.” It could be the slogan of the year – and rather longer, probably – but the phrase comes from Shakespeare’s late romance Cymbeline. Its Act III scene, in which Britain announces that it is breaking its... Read more... |
King Lear, Old VicSaturday, 05 November 2016
The signs were there early in Glenda Jackson's career that she would one day have what it takes to "ascend the Everest" (as the cliché has it) of Lear. So powerful was her performance as Ophelia in Peter Hall's production of Hamlet in 1965 that... Read more... |
