Shakespeare
All Is True review - all's well doesn't end well in limp Shakespeare biopicSaturday, 09 February 2019
All may be true but not much is of interest in this Kenneth Branagh-directed film that casts an actor long-steeped in the Bard as a gardening-minded Shakespeare glimpsed in (lushly filmed) retirement. Seemingly conceived in order to persuade... Read more... |
The Tragedy of King Richard II, Almeida Theatre review - Simon Russell Beale leads revelatory interpretationWednesday, 19 December 2018
Joe Hill-Gibbins’ uncompromising production of The Tragedy of Richard II hurtles through Shakespeare’s original text, stripping and flaying it so it is revealed in a new shuddering light. Narcissistic, petulant and indecisive, Simon Russell Beale’s... Read more... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor, RSC, Barbican review - panto ShakespeareThursday, 13 December 2018
For those of us who have never thought much before about links between pantomime and Shakespeare, Fiona Laird’s new Merry Wives offers a chance to see how the combination works. Making short shrift of tradition, her version of the Falstaff comedy... Read more... |
Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe review - sexually-charged production draws power from the shadowsThursday, 15 November 2018
Macbeth has rarely seemed quite as metrosexual as in this gorgeous shadow-painted production that marks Globe artistic director Michelle Terry’s first production in the Sam Wanamaker theatre. Even in a play that walks the tightrope between its... Read more... |
Robert Hastie: 'a seam of love runs through the play' - interviewMonday, 12 November 2018
Robert Hastie is a little late for our meeting. Directing Shakespeare's darkest tragedy in London while also running Sheffield Theatres must sometimes cause a logjam of simultaneous demands, but whatever the morning's problem in the north of England... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Barbican review - plenty of action but not enough wordsWednesday, 07 November 2018
It’s clear from the start – from a Prologue that quickly dissolves familiar rhythms and words into a Babel of clamour and sound. This RSC Romeo and Juliet, newly transferred to the Barbican, isn’t much interested in what is said. Actions not words... Read more... |
Macbeth, RSC, Barbican review - Shakespeare's blood-boltered tragedy, tense but flawedWednesday, 24 October 2018
It has been said before: Macbeth's reputation for bad luck has more to do with the difficulty of bringing off a successful production than the supernatural elements in the play. Even those of us who have seen dozens of interpretations can count the... Read more... |
Measure for Measure, Donmar Warehouse review - Shakespeare twice-over packs a partial stingTuesday, 16 October 2018
Shakespeare exists to be refracted and filtered through the age in which he is presented. So there's every good reason for the Donmar's artistic director Josie Rourke to approach the eternally problematic Measure for Measure as a twice-told tale... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Young Vic review - Kwame Kwei-Armah makes a big-hearted return homeTuesday, 09 October 2018
What better way to celebrate a homecoming than with a party? That is the capacious-hearted thinking behind this new musical version of Twelfth Night, which additionally marks Kwame Kwei-Armah's debut production at the helm of that undeniable dynamo... Read more... |
Antony and Cleopatra, National Theatre review - Ralph Fiennes in marvellous throttleThursday, 27 September 2018
You always wonder about those final scenes of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Are they really needed dramatically; do they work? We understand, of course, that a closing exhalation may add impact to high passions just witnessed. But is it just a romantic... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh - a touch too sweetThursday, 27 September 2018
“Well, that was really sweet,” one young audience member in front of me remarked on his way out of Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre. And yes, there’s no denying that director Wils Wilson’s colourful, psychedelic, summer-of-love-set Twelfth Night, the... Read more... |
Henry V, Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol review - the pity of warFriday, 21 September 2018
Henry V is a play shot through with martial energy and the terrible chaos of war. The almost overpowering violence and energy that characterise the story give the unfolding of the drama a permanently disrupted form, as if the unpredictability of... Read more... |
