Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - in praise of a fantastical SpaniardThursday, 30 August 2018
If ever there was a play of “well bandied” words, it’s surely Love’s Labour’s Lost. The early Shakespearean comedy may once have hit a highpoint for verbal wit, but much of that context – the word play, the allusions, the sheer stylistic preening... Read more... |
Pericles, National Theatre review - a fizzingly energetic productionMonday, 27 August 2018
A break-dancing mini Michael Jackson, a transvestite Neptune, and a hero who wears his hubris as proudly as his gold-tipped trainers, are unconventional even by Shakespeare’s standards, but they all play a key part in this joyful act of subversion.... Read more... |
Emilia, Shakespeare's Globe review - polemic disguised as a playThursday, 16 August 2018
It feels like Michelle Terry’s first summer season at the Globe has been building up to Emilia for a while now. The theme is Shakespeare and race, so Othello was something of a given. It's joined by The Winter’s Tale, as if the Emilias of these two... Read more... |
King Lear, Duke of York's Theatre, review - towering Ian McKellenFriday, 27 July 2018
Jonathan Munby's production starring Ian McKellen, first seen last year in Chichester and now transferred to the West End, reflects our everyday anxieties, emphasising in the world of a Trump presidency, the dangers of childish, petulant... Read more... |
As You Like It, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - love among the bucolic hippiesFriday, 13 July 2018
It's been raining in Regent's Park. On a balmy summer evening during a prolonged dry spell – perfect for outdoor theatrics – it seems ironic to tempt fate by creating artificial downpours and thunderstorms. But this music-filled, modern-dress... Read more... |
As You Like It, Shakespeare in the Squares review - an exuberant celebration of the Summer of LoveWednesday, 04 July 2018
Gender-bending, confused identities, and hedonistic anarchy go together as naturally in summer Shakespeare as strawberries and cucumbers in Pimms, and in Tatty Hennessy’s exuberant alfresco version of As You Like It, touring to squares across... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's Globe review - a chilly tale for a time of austerityTuesday, 03 July 2018
“A sad tale’s best for winter,” Leontes’ young son Mamillius tells us. By that logic the current summer heatwave should be bringing us a Winter’s Tale overflowing with joy – the songs of Bohemia drowning out the shouted accusations and desperate... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Wilton's Music Hall review - a stereotype-smashing evening of pagan delightsFriday, 29 June 2018
The Faction’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a production in which women are more likely to kick ass than sleep with one – a muscular, mischievous take on the Bard’s most light-hearted play about forbidden love. As might be expected, this boldly... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, BBC Four review - electrifying TV launch of all-women Shakespeare trilogyMonday, 18 June 2018
Who would have thought, when Phyllida Lloyd's Donmar Julius Caesar opened to justified fanfare, that two more Shakespeare masterpieces would be sustained no less powerfully within the women's-prison context over the following years? Faced with the "... Read more... |
Falstaff, Garsington Opera review - Sir John under pressureMonday, 18 June 2018
All those pranks, set-ups, fake letters and disguises, they just keep coming thick and fast in Verdi’s Falstaff. The score has irresistible energy and momentum. The composer made sure in his last opera that when the fantasies, schemes and hopes of... Read more... |
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare's Globe review - a breezy bromance served up slightMonday, 04 June 2018
Those who find the Bard tough going – wasn't that one of Emma Rice's admissions back in the day? – should beat a path to The Two Noble Kinsmen, a late-career collaboration with John Fletcher that emerges as Shakespeare lite. Remembered (dimly) as... Read more... |
King Lear, BBC Two review - modernised TV adaptation is a mixed blessingTuesday, 29 May 2018
Some have contended that King Lear is unstageable, and perhaps it’s unfilmable too. Richard Eyre‘s new version for the BBC sets Shakespeare’s most remorselessly bleak tragedy in a pseudo-modern Britain where historic stately homes co-exist with... Read more... |
