Shakespeare
Julius Caesar, RSC, RoundhouseTuesday, 11 January 2011
Problematic in performance in a way that the “problem plays” simply aren’t, Shakespeare’s Roman plays remain some of his hardest to stage satisfactorily. Updated versions too often turn into Magritte-esque fantasies of identikit, suited politicos,... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, English National Ballet, London ColiseumSunday, 09 January 2011
Busy, busy, busy tends to have been the watchword of Rudolf Nureyev’s elaborate choreographies. Prokofiev, as the most direct of musical dramatists, demanded streamlining from Sergey Radlov’s complicated scenario in 1935, but Nureyev tends to have... Read more... |
Royal Shakespeare Company, 2011 SeasonSaturday, 08 January 2011
The Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates its 50th birthday season with the grand reopening of its transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre at a cost of £112.8 million. The temporary Courtyard Theatre folds curtains on the sold-out smash hit that is... Read more... |
Donmar Warehouse, 2011 SeasonSaturday, 08 January 2011
The Donmar Warehouse's 2011 season listings take audiences, as so often, in unpredictable directions, from the farcical tensions of American competitive spelling to the high tragedy of 18th-century Schiller. Full season guide below.King Lear,... Read more... |
National Theatre, 2011 SeasonFriday, 07 January 2011
The National Theatre's 2011 season listings offer double Shakespeare rations in an eclectic schedule: as Nicholas Hytner's unfussy, modern Hamlet goes on tour round the UK with an authoritative Rory Kinnear as the Prince, a new Twelfth Night by... Read more... |
Year Out/Year In: Theatre Raises the Bar, From Old to NewSunday, 02 January 2011
One expects Shakespeare to be rediscovered afresh on the British stage (if not here, where?), and it was gratifying during 2010 to find the Royal Court - a venue all about the new - raising the authorial bar ever higher via an (almost) unbroken... Read more... |
Bah Humbug: Judi Dench - the greatest stage actor ever?Monday, 20 December 2010
Seems we’re living through a silly season. There are rumours afoot that our PM’s Big Society is nothing other than a fig leaf for a chaos theory of how to run society, ie let the devil take the hindmost. And in the arts we’ve got theatre’s esteemed... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, RSC/RoundhouseFriday, 17 December 2010
A night when a fresh fall of snow was fluttering from the heavens could hardly have felt more fitting for the opening of this Shakespearean romance – particularly since David Farr’s production for the RSC, first seen in Stratford in 2009, so... Read more... |
Macbeth, BBC FourMonday, 13 December 2010
Via the Chichester Festival and acclaimed runs on Broadway and in the West End, director Rupert Goold's Macbeth has made a sizzling transition to television. Set in an anarchic, war-torn Scotland and suffused with imagery of murder, torture and... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, RSC/RoundhouseSaturday, 11 December 2010
For quirky authority in Shakespeare, Kathryn Hunter is surely up there with Mark Rylance. Her production of Pericles was one of the two best things I’ve seen at the Globe – Rylance in Twelfth Night being the other - her characterisations of Lear and... Read more... |
King Lear, Donmar WarehouseWednesday, 08 December 2010
It's the right season for a frosty Lear. With people being frozen on the open road by temperatures rarely visited upon the land, we're reminded that nature can be our greatest adversary, that we're placed in the universe as much to fight its innate... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Actor Derek JacobiTuesday, 07 December 2010
Derek Jacobi (b 1938) grew up in Leytonstone. His father was a tobacconist, his mother worked in a department store. Although he entered the profession in the great age of social mobility in the early 1960s, no one could have predicted that he would... Read more... |
