Medea at the New Theatre

Lynn Fotheringham previews an on-campus Greek tragedy production The New Theatre production of Medea that I mentioned in my last blog-post opens tomorrow. I’ve been lucky enough to get to attend some of the rehearsals over the last fortnight, and to see the performance start coming together. Jazmine Greenaway probably has the most challenging job …

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk — or should that be Medea?

Helen Lovatt reflects on intertextuality and a trip to the opera (and continues to see Argonauts everywhere). Last week I experienced the theatrical pounding of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in a sensational and vivid production by the ENO. Get a flavour of it on youtube here. I do like a text that puts its …

Women of Troy part 3

Lynn Fotheringham analyses some audience responses from last week’s production of Women of Troy.     In my last post about the New Theatre’s Women of Troy, I mentioned that I was conducting some audience-research via an on-line questionnaire. I am interested in the different ideas of ‘authenticity’ that affect our response to representations of the ancient world, …

Women of Troy

The second part of Lynn Fotheringham‘s preview of a student production of Women of Troy, opening this Wednesday at the New Theatre on University Park campus.   With the New Theatre’s “Women of Troy” opening this Wednesday (6th May), I thought I’d whet your appetites with thoughts about some of the issues involved in staging …

Women of Troy

Lynn Fotheringham previews an imminent production of Euripides’ play at the University’s student theatre.     A recent conversation I had with sisters Page and Eden Philips Harrington, director and producer of the New Theatre’s forthcoming production of Women of Troy (6th-9th May), revealed their creative ideas for dealing with the difficulties of putting on a Greek tragedy …

Coming Soon: Theatre with a Classical Connection…

Lynn Fotheringham has been searching out theatrical productions with a classical connection over the next few months, in Nottingham, nearby cities and London. Sheffield, 13th February only, 13.00: Phaedra’s Love, semi-staged reading as part of a season of the complete works of Sarah Kane, whose reputation for writing plays with lots of on-stage violence suggests …

On (Not) Spoiling the Medea

Lynn Fotheringham reflects on the National Theatre’s recent production of Medea. In 2007 there was a new film-adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel, I am Legend. Two previousversions had failed to justice to the original twist-ending, which chillingly inverts the roles of the vampires/zombies and their hunter. I knew in my heart of hearts that …

Enjoying Receptions of Athenian Tragedy

Larissa Ransom, who is studying for an MA in Classical Literature, has recently seen Pilot Theatre’s Antigone, National Theatre Live’s Medea and Broadway Theatre Archive’s Antigone. Here she muses on how this has changed her thinking about Greek tragedy…   It is commonly believed that much of a book is lost when turned into a …

A Midsummer Night Reverie (2): more lost tragedies

In this post I (belatedly) publish the second part of Alan Sommerstein’s thoughts on Nick Lowe’s paper on tragic fragments, delivered to the Nottingham Branch of the Classical Association.   In the first part of this post, I reported Nick Lowe’s top ten lost tragedies from his excellent paper at the AGM of the Nottingham …

A Midsummer Night Reverie: ten top “lost” tragedies (and more) (1)

This post is by Professor Alan Sommerstein. A few weeks ago – on 24 June, Midsummer Day, to be precise (whence my title) – the Nottingham branch of the Classical Association held its Annual General Meeting (at Loughborough, whose admirable schools and teachers have long been one of the branch’s mainstays).  Between the business meeting …