Henry V (Edward’s Boys) @ The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
March 18, 2013
When I first saw Edward’s Boys, they were a group of mostly eleven year olds performing extracts of John Lyly’s Endymion in a campus drama studio. Last night, the same company (indeed, with many of the same actors) filled the Swan Theatre to bursting with an audience including knights of the realm, RSC actors and …
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Read not Dead) @ Sackler Studios, Shakespeare’s Globe
February 20, 2013
‘Post-modern before the term was even invented’. So runs the blurb on Shakespeare’s Globe’s ‘Read not Dead‘ webpage, and it’s a fitting description of Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle. A failure when first performed, and an often difficult play in modern revival, the Read not Dead team here excelled themselves with an …
Candlemas Revels at Middle Temple Hall
February 4, 2013
As part of a quite wonderful conference this weekend, I went to Candlemas Revels at Middle Temple Hall on Saturday night. The preceding two-day conference, convened by Jackie Watson and Darren Royston, focused on the Elizabethan and Jacobean context of the Inns of Court in relation to the legal and social culture of early modern …
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Aloud!) @ The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford
January 6, 2013
Shakespeare Aloud! is the in-house acting team at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, offering what they refer to as a ‘jukebox Shakespeare’ for tourists, where bitesize segments, songs, speeches are delivered on demand to the visitors at the houses. It offers added value for visitors and seems to fit in with the casual engagement with Shakespeare …
Redcrosse: England and St George @ Coventry Cathedral
September 26, 2012
As part of my ongoing interest in contemporary appropriations and reworkings of early modern literature, Redcrosse is an event which deserves attention (although, sadly, I won’t be able to attend this performance). Here’s the blurb: On the evening of Saturday the 17th of November the RSC will be performing Redcrosse, the new poetic liturgy for …
2008: Macbeth (TR Warszawa) @ Guardian Online
August 13, 2012
By a bizarre quirk of international programming, this is the fourth Polish production of Macbeth I’ve seen. The most recent, by Teatr Piesn Kozla, remains one of the finest Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen, while Teatro Buiro Podrozy’s Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man? created a wild and hugely experimental aesthetic featuring stilts and a …
Isles of Wonder
July 29, 2012
There’s so much been written on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony that I certainly don’t feel the need to talk at length about the event. Suffice to say, I thought it was a bold and wonderful opening, celebratory while keeping its tongue at least partly in its cheek, self-deprecating and triumphant. The Bond/Queen and Bean …
Troilus and Cressida (1623 Theatre) @ Online
July 9, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.unclepandarus.com A fascinating experiment from my friends at 1623 Theatre began in earnest today. At the website www.unclepandarus.com, a coughing, bearded soldier is delivering daily video updates from an underground bunker. In the aftermath of a nuclear war that killed ten billion souls, fought between two rival powers over a celebrity …
Free Teaching Shakespeare webinar
June 29, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.teachingshakespeare.ac.uk/ For readers interested in Shakespearean pedagogy, there’s now a very exciting new resource that I’m touting on behalf of my former colleagues at the University of Warwick. "Teaching Shakespeare" is a collaboration between Warwick and the Royal Shakespeare Company, creating a package of interactive resources, guides and videos for use …
The Bloody Banquet (Blood and Thunder Theatre Company) @ The Shakespeare Institute
June 10, 2012
Writing about web page http://bloodandthundertheatre.org.uk/#/productions/4560980158 Thomas Dekker’s The Bloody Banquet (possibly written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton) has not been performed, to my knowledge, since the seventeenth century. It was a pleasure, therefore, to be involved in a major new revival of the play in the form of a one-off staged reading in Stratford-upon-Avon, as …
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