Venus & Adonis: A Masque For Puppets (Little Angel) @ The Swan Theatre
March 16, 2007
One of the problems with revivals is that the press aren’t particularly concerned second time around. ‘Venus and Adonis’ doesn’t have a press night during its week-long stay at the Swan, and all professional reviews of it are buried deep in internet archives. A large proportion of the Stratford audience saw it in 2004, when …
As You Like It (Sheffield Theatres) @ The Swan Theatre
March 9, 2007
‘As You Like It’ is my least favourite Shakespeare play to watch. It’s interesting enough to read, and funny, but every production I’ve seen of it – the BBC film, the recent RSC production, the Christine Edzard film, even the half hour animated version – has left me bored. Having seen some negative reviews of …
Twelfth Night (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Swan Theatre
March 3, 2007
Has it really been nine months since I last saw this production? When the Russian ensemble from the Chekov International Theatre Festival visited Warwick Arts Centre back in May 2006, I was only a few plays into the Complete Works Festival, and at the time it was one of the best things I’d ever seen. …
Coriolanus (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
February 28, 2007
This is the final play in Shakespeare’s canon that I had never seen a production of (well, unless you count ‘Edward III’- and I’ve still only seen ‘The Merchant Of Venice’ on film), meaning that it’s the final chance I had to come to a production completely fresh, knowing little more than the basic outline …
Nothing Like The Sun (RSC/Opera North) @ The Courtyard Theatre
February 25, 2007
Considering this is the ‘Complete Works’ Festival, it seems an appropriate time to point out that that doesn’t mean every word Shakespeare ever wrote. None of his commendatory poems or prefixes are being performed, for example. His famous epitaph (‘Cursed be he that moves these bones’, chilling) stays on his grave. More prominently, neither ‘A …
Actors and the community
February 22, 2007
I’ve just been reading the biographies of the actors in Teatr Piesn Kozla, and wanted to post about some of the things that they’ve done. They don’t advertise themselves as a community theatre group, but yet I found reading their CVs very inspiring. Here are some of the highlights: Actor Alexander Rogaczewski has, since the …
Macbeth (Work–In–Progress) (Song of the Goat Theatre) @ The Swan Theatre
You’ll note that I’ve included the fact this production was a work-in-progress in the title to this entry. I feel (along with the RSC, who’ve made this prominent from the start) that it’s important to highlight this, as anyone expecting a full production of ‘Macbeth’ this evening would have been sorely disappointed. Tonight’s presentation was …
Antony & Cleopatra (RSC) @ The Novello Theatre
February 18, 2007
Friday night was the chance to revisit, for one final time, the excellent ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, bookending my Complete Works marathon quite nicely with the same production, seen for a third time almost a year after I first saw it in the Swan. It was very good, but I was disappointed at how much its …
The ‘value’ of a production
February 13, 2007
Some things that provoked thought today about ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’. The audience was tiny, the smallest I’ve ever seen for a full-scale production in the Swan. If we were a third full, I’d be surprised. This could be for several reasons. I’d imagine many people were put off by the foreign language and …
Richard III: An Arab Tragedy (Al-Bassam Theatre) @ The Swan Theatre
The final ‘response’ play saw the hugely-respected Sulayman Al-Bassam theatre company coming to the Swan, presenting a reworked ‘Richard III’ that relocated the action to the contemporary Middle East, a world of oilfields, bickering clans, foreign policies and constant surveillance. It’s been hugely built up over the year, as a new RSC commission, and promised …
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