Macbeth @ Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre, York
June 25, 2018
NB while to my knowledge there is no official press night, this piece concerns the first ‘preview’ of Macbeth. ‘I begin to grow a’weary of the sun’. Macbeth looked it, too. On the hottest day of the year so far, the cast of Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre’s Macbeth performed in direct sunlight in temperatures of 31 …
The Duchess of Malfi (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
June 2, 2018
I do hate Stratford-upon-Avon. Not only is it a six-hour round train journey from the East Midlands, but a single trespassing incident resulted in two cancellations and, most selfishly, me missing the first half hour of Maria Aberg’s spectacular (and spectacularly bloody) Duchess of Malfi. I am reliably informed by authorities (read: Twitter) that the …
Othello (Everyman Company) @ Liverpool Everyman
May 27, 2018
Liverpool Everyman’s repertory company’s second season brings together a single ensemble for a wonderfully eclectic group of plays – including A Clockwork Orange, Paint Your Wagon and The Big I Am. Othello, perhaps surprisingly, was the smallest scale of the three productions, performed by only eight of the ensemble in the round on a relatively …
Macbeth @ The National Theatre
April 28, 2018
‘Now, after a civil war’ declared the programme, presaging the latest in a long line of not-quite-now post-apocalyptic settings for a major Shakespearean production. In Rufus Norris’s hands, the concept was at its laziest; not here the specificity of a post-Brexit decline as in Melly Still’s Cymbeline at the RSC. In this Macbeth, Scotland (dominated …
Macbeth (RSC Live from Stratford) @ Nottingham Broadway
April 11, 2018
At the moment of Duncan’s death, a timer set at two hours appeared on the upstage wall, and began counting down. Polly Findlay’s Macbeth – and Christopher Ecclestone’s titular monarch – shifted from that point into an inevitable decline, the ever-present clock reminding Macbeth of the inevitable consequences of his fatal action. And with two …
Périclès, Prince de Tyr (Cheek by Jowl) @ Les Gémeaux, Sceaux
March 9, 2018
NB This piece is based on the first two public performance as well as the final two pre-opening rehearsal runs. I am grateful to Cheek by Jowl for so generously allowing me to observe the final stages of preparation. Cheek by Jowl last assayed Pericles in 1984/5 in an acclaimed production that Carole Wood declared …
Julius Caesar @ The Bridge Theatre
March 4, 2018
On February 14th 2018, two weeks after the new Bridge Theatre’s Julius Caesar opened, seventeen people were killed at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. As part of the international outcry against gun ownership and violence that followed, numerous visceral, devastating accounts of the survivors’ experience of the attack circulated, along with graphic accounts of …
Twelfth Night (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
February 23, 2018
The RSC’s Christmas show, Twelfth Night, saw the creative team behind the popular Love’s Labour’s Lost/Won double bill (director Christopher Luscombe, designer Simon Higlett, composer Nigel Hess, movement director Jenny Arnold) reunite for a production that had all of the flaws and few of the redeeming features of the earlier productions. Twelfth Night had its …
The Winter’s Tale (National Theatre) @ The Dorfman
February 16, 2018
I’m something of a Winter’s Tale completist these days, so it was a joy to get to see the National’s new touring version for young people. Stripped down to an hour and five minutes, Justin Audibert’s pared-down production took a complex and devastating play, and turned it into a heartwarming, and often uncompromising, examination of …
All’s Well that Ends Well (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
January 28, 2018
In the end, I only saw two productions at the Globe while it was under Emma Rice’s leadership. This wasn’t by design – I loved Rice’s work with Kneehigh and, irrespective of the ongoing complaints about her treatment of the space, I thoroughly enjoyed the version of her Midsummer Night’s Dream that the BBC broadcast …
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