Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 04 August 2016
What do women want? Ballet plots are not the best guide, since the main desiderata – a well-paying job, coffee dates with girlfriends, not to die young of a broken heart – are rarely the lot of ballet heroines. Comedies at least tend to have the not... Read more... |
As You Like It, The Savill Garden, WindsorMonday, 27 June 2016
How often are you charmed by one of Shakespeare’s sylvan romances while literally under a greenwood tree? Even if this summer is proving rather generous with the rough weather, it is an unusual pleasure to wander around a fine woodland garden while... Read more... |
Macbeth, Shakespeare's GlobeSaturday, 25 June 2016
It begins promisingly, a dark Gothic fairy tale – both Grimm and grim. The writhing witches (four, oddly) are summoned from a pile of dead bodies, Stefan Fichert’s eerie puppetry all chopped-up limbs and interchanging demonic heads, hands scuttling... Read more... |
Henry V, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreThursday, 23 June 2016
As we finally go to the polls, casting votes based on our view of national identity and Britain’s place in the world, here comes Shakespeare’s ever-topical play. Robert Hastie’s thoughtful take is contemporary dress but stripped back, not so much... Read more... |
Richard III, Almeida TheatreFriday, 17 June 2016
"I can add colours to the chameleon," Richard III remarks of himself early in his anguished, marauding ascent to the throne, and the description could equally apply to the electrifying actor, Ralph Fiennes, who is London's latest hedgehog/dog/toad/... Read more... |
Dream On: Surprises in the Athenian WoodSunday, 05 June 2016
Doctor Peter Raby (Emeritus Fellow at Cambridge University) was quick to pull me up on my first stab at A Midsummer Night's Dream – an indulgence-of-a-production played out in a university park to the sound of cucumber flirting with Pimm's. His... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's GlobeSaturday, 04 June 2016
There’s a problem with The Taming of the Shrew, and it isn’t the one of Shakespeare’s making. So legendary are the work’s difficulties, so notorious its potential misogyny, that each new production can feel like a proffered solution, a defence of an... Read more... |
CBSO, McGegan, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 02 June 2016
“Our Shakespeare” is the name of the CBSO’s current season. They're making the same point that Ben Elton makes slightly less subtly in Upstart Crow: that Shakespeare was basically a Brummie. And by implication, that four centuries of musical... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, BBC OneTuesday, 31 May 2016
Theseus was a tablet-carrying dictator, Lysander a sweet-faced asthmatic, and Peter Quince rechristened Mistress Quince in the agreeably unexpected presence of Elaine Paige: those were among the innovations of Russell T Davies's larky reworking of... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Garrick TheatreThursday, 26 May 2016
Trouble remembering in which country Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers cross paths? Branagh’s panting paean to Fellini will sort you out. Stylish as a monochromatic Vogue spread, and as self-consciously Italian as Bruno Tonioli guzzling lasagne in a... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses - Richard III, BBC TwoSunday, 22 May 2016
Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, was born to play the blasted, blighted Richard III, as one might expect from an actor whose long-term apprenticeship to both classical theatre and television converged to bring the BBC's Hollow Crown series to a... Read more... |
King John, Rose Theatre, KingstonSaturday, 21 May 2016
According to Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That, the true Bible of English history, King John was a Bad (to be exact, an Awful) King. Shakespeare had quite an interest in Bad Kings – Richards II and III were also subjected to his... Read more... |
