The Birth of Merlin (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe
September 16, 2013
Of the fourteen plays included in C.F. Tucker Brooke’s Shakespeare Apocrypha in 1908 (to be supplanted next month by the RSC Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others, in which I’ve had a hand), I’ve now seen six: The Two Noble Kinsmen (twice), Thomas More, Arden of Faversham (twice), A Yorkshire Tragedy (twice), Fair Em and …
All’s Well that Ends Well (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
September 14, 2013
The last production in the RSC’s 2012 summer season, a rare main-stage outing for All’s Well that Ends Well, followed a recent series of successful London revivals of the play, including the Globe’s own, the visiting production by Arpana Theatre (which I’ve reviewed in the recently released CUP book Shakespeare Beyond English), and the National Theatre’s sublime …
Edward II (National) @ The Olivier, National Theatre
September 9, 2013
Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II is an obvious companion piece to Shakespeare’s Richard II, both dealing with the deposition of a king arguably more preoccupied with his friends and sycophants than with his kingdom, and the two have been performed together frequently (including most famously with Ian McKellen in the dual leads, making explicit the homosexual …
A Mad World, My Masters (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
August 8, 2013
Unusually for the RSC, the poster to Sean Foley’s new production of A Mad World, My Masters (the second I’ve seen, the first professional) advertises itself prominently as ‘edited by Sean Foley and Phil Porter). This is a frustrating statement to read, partly as it implies on some level that the RSC’s other productions aren’t …
Macbeth (Manchester International Festival) @ NT Live
July 21, 2013
The camerawork for the NT Live screenings has developed extraordinarily since the project’s early days. Covering Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford’s Macbeth, cameras swooped over the action, fast editing gave a kinetic and chaotic insight into the battle scenes, extreme close-ups caught beads of sweat and tears on Macduff’s face, and the slow pans to …
R-3: Hunchback or Hero? (Centre Five Productions) @ Leicester Guildhall
July 18, 2013
This is a direct reproduction of a review for Exeunt Magazine. As R-3: Hunchback or Hero? was being devised in London in August 2012, the bones of Richard III were discovered serendipitously in Leicester. The revival of the production in Leicester itself was inevitable, and the eerie setting of the Mayor’s Parlour at Leicester’s Guildhall …
The True Tragedy of The Duke of York (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
July 7, 2013
3 Henry VI is perhaps the hardest play in the canon to begin, starting as it does with the explosion of the Yorks into the Lancastrian throne room. Nick Bagnall had his actors begin standing with the audience before the proscenium arch, then pulling themselves onto the stage in a rather weak movement. This was, …
The Houses of York and Lancaster (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
Having only ever seen one live production of 2 Henry VI, I’d forgotten quite how much happens in this play. Even with the Simpcox scenes cut, the Globe’s production still fell neatly into four miniature plays: the tragedy of Eleanor of Gloucester, the downfall and death of Humphrey and Beaufort, the rebellion of Jack Cade …
Harry the Sixth (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ York Theatre Royal
The Globe’s touring adaptation of the first of the Henry VI plays announced its ambition from the first, with an enormous covered throne standing central on the Theatre Royal stage, flanked by two scaffold towers. The bare, skeletal structures were surrounded by galleries boasting armour, tabards, drums and weapons, evocative of a museum gallery. This …
Titus Andronicus (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
July 4, 2013
The trailer for the RSC’s new Titus, its first in some years, promised a macabre production: carrion birds, rusty cooking implements and chains. The play’s reputation preloads any new outing with expectation of blood, violence, sex and excess, the characteristic ingredients of contemporary Jacobean productions. In writing my own piece for this production’s programme, I …
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