Cymbeline (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
August 2, 2016
A couple of months ago, before the UK jumped the proverbial shark in the EU referendum, a line from Cymbeline was doing the rounds on social media as Brexiteers leapt on Shakespeare’s comment that Britain is A world by itself; and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses. Deploying the time-honoured logic of …
Richard III (Almeida Live) @ Nottingham Broadway
July 22, 2016
I’d been warned to expect it, but even so, the scene of Ralph Fiennes’s Richard III raping Aislin McGuckin’s Queen Elizabeth towards the end of Rupert Goold’s new production came out of nowhere. Falling late in a mostly intelligent, finely characterised take on the play, Fiennes and McGuckin pulled out all the stops for their …
The Alchemist (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
July 10, 2016
The RSC’s contribution to the 400th anniversary of Ben Jonson’s 1616 Folio is a Swan production of The Alchemist, occupying the slot that Volpone took last summer. The RSC invested a large, game cast, one of the biggest bands I’ve seen in the Swan for some time, and a production budget that stretched to a …
Doctor Faustus (The Jamie Lloyd Company) @ The Duke of York’s Theatre
May 28, 2016
Jamie Lloyd’s West End production of Doctor Faustus, promoted with a cult celebrity star and promises of a deliberately subversive approach to rewriting and updating the play is a Marmite production. No doubt many will hate the mash-up of A-text and new writing that emerge from a joint writing credit (‘By Christopher Marlowe and Colin …
Doctor Faustus (Passion in Practice) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
May 23, 2016
I was privileged this week to spend several days in rehearsals with Passion in Practice on their new staged reading of Doctor Faustus. Practice and Passion is a long-term rolling ensemble project devoted to the exploration of original pronunciation and, as I’m currently editing the play for a new anthology, the company kindly offered me …
The Taming of the Shrew @ Shakespeare’s Globe
May 17, 2016
NB – this review is of a production still in preview. In fact, not only was the Globe’s new production of The Taming of the Shrew still in preview, but the understudies weren’t yet fully rehearsed, as became apparent as the production’s interval stretched out to half an hour with still no sign of the …
Doctor Faustus (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
May 15, 2016
Watching Maria Aberg’s production of Doctor Faustus in the Swan, I found it hard not to think of A-level drama projects. This isn’t just because I’m speaking at a sixth-form study day at the RSC next month tying in with this production, but because of the deliberately DIY aesthetic of the production, with its gaudy …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation (RSC/Lovelace Theatre) @ Theatre Royal, Nottingham
May 7, 2016
The RSC’s much-heralded return to regional touring was already a phenomenon before it opened. Erica Whyman’s audacious experiment is touring a full RSC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to cities across the UK, with a different amateur theatre company joining them at each venue to play the Mechanicals and a fairy train for Titania …
Kings of War (Toneelgroep Amsterdam) @ The Barbican Theatre
May 1, 2016
In 2009 I was lucky enough to see Toneelgroep Amsterdam perform Ivo van Hove’s Roman Tragedies at the Barbican. That mammoth reworking of Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra remains one of my lifetime theatrical highlights – not just for its length and ambition, but for its cohesive use of space, its innovative flexibility …
Cymbeline (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
April 16, 2016
Will Tosh’s essay in the programme for Cymbeline considers how that play – and others of this era of the King’s Men – were written to exploit the available technologies of the recently acquired Blackfriars Playhouse. It seems fitting, to that end, that Sam Yates’s production of Cymbeline itself makes flexible use of what is …
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