An Age of Kings (BBC/Illuminations)
December 27, 2013
In 1960, the BBC undertook an extraordinary project. Shakespeare’s eight history plays covering the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III were broadcast in fifteen hour-long episodes with a single ensemble company. Rehearsed quickly and recorded live, the films have been unavailable commercially until now, …
Henry V (Michael Grandage Company) @ The Noel Coward Theatre
December 17, 2013
Following the underwhelming and frustratingly conservative Midsummer Night’s Dream, I didn’t have high hopes for the second Shakespeare in Michael Grandage’s West End season. With promotion once again based entirely around a celebrity actor (Jude Law, returning to the director-actor partnership of Hamlet), a theatre and audience unsuited to the interventionist or radical political readings …
Titus Andronicus (New Theatre) @ The New Theatre, Nottingham
December 5, 2013
I’ve spent much of the last week sticking up post-it notes on posters for the New Theatre’s production of Titus Andronicus, adding ‘and George Peele’s’ after the headline banner ‘William Shakespeare’s’. Titus still feels like a discovery when revived, a first for many of its audiences, and recent issues such as the authorship question (which …
Richard III (Silents Now) @ York Theatre Royal
November 27, 2013
Regular readers may be interested to know that I manage the Twitter hashtag #shaxfilm, an open online extension of my third year specialist module on Screen Shakespeares. The first film we study on this module is Frank Benson’s 1911 Richard III, filmed at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fixed camera, preserving …
Honoria and Mammon (The Owle Schreame) @ St Giles-in-the-Fields Church
November 25, 2013
James Shirley’s Honoria and Mammon appears never to have been performed in the three hundred and fifty years since it was printed during the Interregnum, and its world premiere in the church where Shirley is buried, as part of The Owle Schreame’s ‘Cannibal Valour‘ season, was therefore doubly significant. Playing it uncut, Shirley’s emblematic moral …
Richard III @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 7, 2013
Nottingham Playhouse is advertising its new production of Richard III as the ‘first major staging’ since the discovery of the historical king’s body under that now-infamous car park in Leicester. While this seems a little ungenerous in its implications about Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, the joy of this production will be the chance to see the …
The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged [Revised] (Reduced Shakespeare Company) @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 4, 2013
It would be churlish to react with academic indignation to The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged. The Reduced Shakespeare Company has existed for longer than I’ve been alive, and the Complete Works itself for twenty-six years. While the show may continue to present itself as a radical overturning of Shakespearean/British snobbery and a riotous romp …
Richard II (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
October 30, 2013
As a statement of intent, Gregory Doran’s launch to his tenure as RSC Artistic Director is perfectly judged. Richard II is the most ‘Doranish’ production one could imagine, from the gorgeously conceived lighting design to the sensitive treatment of male-male relationships, from the meticulous attention to detail in the tiniest roles to the playful but …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Michael Grandage Company) @ The Noel Coward Theatre
October 28, 2013
Michael Grandage is an excellent director, particularly of actors. His Othello at the Donmar some years back provided what may prove to be a definitive Othello in Chiwitel Ejiofor, and his Lear starring Derek Jacobi in the same venue found rare intimacy in the play against a stark backdrop of boards. Yet as Grandage leaves …
Bussy D’Ambois (The Owle Schreame) @ St Giles-in-the-Fields Church
The Owle Schreame ‘Cannibal Valour’ residency at St Giles-in-the-Fields Church in London is one of the most exciting events in early modern performance this year. Beginning with a rare outing for George Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois, the company are going on to give (presumably) world premieres of Thomas Nabbes’s The Unfortunate Mother and James Shirley’s Honoria and …
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