Macbeth (Manchester International Festival) @ NT Live
July 21, 2013
The camerawork for the NT Live screenings has developed extraordinarily since the project’s early days. Covering Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford’s Macbeth, cameras swooped over the action, fast editing gave a kinetic and chaotic insight into the battle scenes, extreme close-ups caught beads of sweat and tears on Macduff’s face, and the slow pans to …
R-3: Hunchback or Hero? (Centre Five Productions) @ Leicester Guildhall
July 18, 2013
This is a direct reproduction of a review for Exeunt Magazine. As R-3: Hunchback or Hero? was being devised in London in August 2012, the bones of Richard III were discovered serendipitously in Leicester. The revival of the production in Leicester itself was inevitable, and the eerie setting of the Mayor’s Parlour at Leicester’s Guildhall …
The True Tragedy of The Duke of York (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
July 7, 2013
3 Henry VI is perhaps the hardest play in the canon to begin, starting as it does with the explosion of the Yorks into the Lancastrian throne room. Nick Bagnall had his actors begin standing with the audience before the proscenium arch, then pulling themselves onto the stage in a rather weak movement. This was, …
The Houses of York and Lancaster (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
Having only ever seen one live production of 2 Henry VI, I’d forgotten quite how much happens in this play. Even with the Simpcox scenes cut, the Globe’s production still fell neatly into four miniature plays: the tragedy of Eleanor of Gloucester, the downfall and death of Humphrey and Beaufort, the rebellion of Jack Cade …
Harry the Sixth (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
The Globe’s touring adaptation of the first of the Henry VI plays announced its ambition from the first, with an enormous covered throne standing central on the Theatre Royal stage, flanked by two scaffold towers. The bare, skeletal structures were surrounded by galleries boasting armour, tabards, drums and weapons, evocative of a museum gallery. This …
Titus Andronicus (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
July 4, 2013
The trailer for the RSC’s new Titus, its first in some years, promised a macabre production: carrion birds, rusty cooking implements and chains. The play’s reputation preloads any new outing with expectation of blood, violence, sex and excess, the characteristic ingredients of contemporary Jacobean productions. In writing my own piece for this production’s programme, I …
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