Hamlet (Sonia Friedman Productions/NT Live) @ The Light, Leeds
October 30, 2015
Fortunately, given that I was extremely poorly during last night’s screening, everyone and their doctorate seems to have written about Hamlet already. There are really great pieces out there by Tom Cornford, Holger Schott Syme, Eoin Price, not to mention most of the newspapers at least twice, after the ‘controversy’ (read: storm in a teacup) …
Henry V (RSC/Live from Stratford-upon-Avon) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
October 23, 2015
Gregory Doran’s jaunt through the second tetralogy has come to its climax with this, a Henry V lauded by The Telegraph as ‘the production this country needs’. Following some discussions on Twitter, I remain unconvinced by what exactly this country might ‘need’ from Henry V. Leaders born into privilege who disguise their true purposes and …
Measure for Measure @ The Young Vic
October 14, 2015
One key moment in Measure for Measure exemplified the difference between Dominic Dromgoole’s production at the Globe and this, Joe Hill-Gibbins’s very different take at the Young Vic. In Dromgoole’s production, when Mariah Gale’s Isabella promised to claw out Angelo’s eyes, she simply and quietly removed her cap, revealing for the first time her long …
Measure for Measure @ Shakespeare’s Globe
The Globe has two key advantages in staging Measure for Measure. The first, to which I’ll return, is that everyone is always watching. In a play so concerned with surveillance, overhearing, manipulating events from behind the scene, the absolute exposure of the Globe stage breaks down any illusion of privacy, forcing every character to account …
Richard III @ The Quarry Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse
October 4, 2015
Given the spate of stand-alone Richard IIIs since the titular king’s corpse was exhumed in 2012, it’s a brave production that emphasises the wider cycle of otherwise unseen events. Mark Rosenblatt’s bold and spectacular production for West Yorkshire Playhouse began with a group of industrial cleaners scrubbing a white stage clean of the blood left …
texts&beheadings/ElizabethR (Compagnia de’Colombari) @ Folger Theatre
September 24, 2015
Ahead of the opening of the Folger’s main 15/16 season, the theatre – a beautiful, paradoxical combination of Elizabethan outdoor and indoor theatre elements – plays host in September to a visiting production by Compagnia de’Colombari, Karin Conrood’s texts&beheadings/ElizabethR. Part of Washington’s Women’s Voices Festival, Conrood’s play is a combination of archival research, storytelling and …
Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc (Henry VI, Part 1) (American Shakespeare Center) @ the Blackfriars, Staunton VA
September 13, 2015
NB this review is of a preview performance, and does not reflect the play as of press night The resident company at the Blackfriars works exceptionally hard. Twelve actors are currently performing four Shakespeare plays in repertory six days of the week; not only that, but the whole company perform for fifteen minutes before the …
Antony and Cleopatra (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars, Staunton VA
Although Staunton’s Blackfriars was constructed first, my experience of it comes through having seen several shows previously in the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Virginia’s theatre feels very like the Wanamaker, if the Wanamaker breathed out substantially and took itself a lot less seriously. The resident company (most of the current acting company have been in …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare Theatre Company) @ Sidney Harman Hall
September 6, 2015
It’s been nine years since I saw the Shakespeare Theatre Company tour to the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon with their wonderful production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, and I’m delighted to have been able to return the visit while I’m based at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC this month. I’m also fortunate that this September marks the twenty-fifth …
Othello (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
August 27, 2015
With the exception of the German production that played for four nights during the Complete Works Festival, it’s been well over a decade since Othello was last on the main stage at the RSC. Of all the plays deemed controversial, from The Taming of the Shrew to The Merchant of Venice, Othello is the one …
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