Ubu Roi (Cheek by Jowl) @ Theatre of Nations, Moscow
November 23, 2014
Normally I would not be writing about a production of a Jarry play on this blog. However, given that the play itself draws liberally on Macbeth, Richard III and Hamlet; that this production is by a company about whom I am preparing to write a book; and that I’ve travelled to Moscow in order to …
The Witch of Edmonton (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
October 26, 2014
(note – this review is of a preview performance) The Roaring Girls season, discussed in previous posts on this blog, ended with an entirely untypical coda. Directed by a man (Gregory Doran), given an early modern setting and appearing divorced from the statements about feminism and gender roles within the RSC that had characterised the …
A Christian Turn’d Turk (Read Not Dead) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
October 6, 2014
Back in May, four teams of paired scholars and directors took the stage at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to pitch for the return of a classic Read Not Dead production. We could have had Middleton’s Your Five Gallants. We could have had Lyly’s Sappho and Phao (though perhaps Lyly needs have been better met recently …
The Woman in the Moon (The Dolphin’s Back) @ The Rose Playhouse, Bankside
October 5, 2014
Through the combined efforts of scholar Andy Kesson, secondary school teacher Perry Mills and director James Wallace, John Lyly has achieved a remarkable renaissance in recent years. The revival in Lyly’s fortunes is due almost entirely to the rediscovery of his works, not for their complexity of allusion and attachment to court politics, but for …
Hamlet @ The Royal Exchange, Manchester
September 21, 2014
Despite the apparent novelty, Hamlet is perhaps the Shakespearean tragic hero most often played by a woman. As Tony Howard’s excellent book sets out, women have performed the role for more than two centuries, and indeed the finest of all Hamlet films features the superlative Asta Nielsen in the role. Nonetheless, Maxine Peake’s return to …
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
September 4, 2014
Much was made during last night’s live broadcast of the RSC’s Two Gentlemen of Verona of the fact that it has been in the region of forty-five years since the play last made it onto the main stage at Stratford. One of the great things about the current trundle through the canon is that it …
The White Devil (Royal Shakespeare Company) @ The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
August 17, 2014
Webster epitomises what critics such as Susan Bennett, Pascale Aebischer and Kathryn Prince have termed ‘the Jacobean’, in the sense that refers not to the literal historical period but the subset of early modern drama which usually commands an aesthetic prioritising sex, violence, spectacle and excess. Maria Aberg, who in her previous shows at the …
The Roaring Girl (RSC) @ The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
August 15, 2014
The Roaring Girl is a much better idea than it is a play. The idea of the ‘Roaring Girl’ (the title, of course, of the current Swan season) is a fantastic crucible for exploring ideas of gender identity and sexual performance, and the involved plot of shopkeepers’ wives and rakes about town taking advantage of …
Arden of Faversham (Royal Shakespeare Company) @ The Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
August 13, 2014
In a year in which MacDonald P. Jackson’s new book has fairly definitively established the case for the place of Arden of Faversham in the Shakespeare canon, it’s rather refreshing to see a production of the play at the RSC that leans in no way upon Shakespeare, attributing the play to ‘Anonymous’ (much as Terry …
The Comedy of Errors (Pendley Shakespeare Festival) @ Pendley Manor
August 11, 2014
The Pendley Shakespeare Festival is one of the grandest exemplars of the British tradition for summer amateur Shakespeare performed outdoors. Now in its sixty-fifth year, the Festival boasts an extraordinarily beautiful setting in the grounds of a 4* hotel that also plays host to a flock of peacocks, covered seating stands for some 400 audience …
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