Twelfth Night @ Shakespeare’s Globe
September 30, 2012
The Globe’s double-bill of Original Practices productions links Twelfth Night with the much longer run of Richard III reviewed in my last post. Again, the backboards of the tiring house were lifted to reveal the actors dressing; again the female characters were men in white make-up; again onlookers sat in the galleries and the band played original instruments. …
Richard III @ Shakespeare’s Globe
It’s been a busy year for Richard III. Not only have the RSC and now the Globe exhumed him live onstage, but what may be his actual remains have been unearthed in a Leicester car park. With the Tobacco Factory and Nottingham Playhouse due to stage Shakespeare’s play in 2013, the play has entered a …
The Taming of the Shrew @ Shakespeare’s Globe
September 22, 2012
Standing in the pit of the Globe on Thursday night, a disturbance broke out behind me. A steward remonstrated with a lager-swilling England fan, with tattoos on his cheeks and unkempt beard. Tourists moved to protect their belongings and their friends as the noisy man refused to leave the auditorium, then pushed through the crowd …
Macbeth (Sheffield Theatres) @ The Crucible
September 15, 2012
Daniel Evans has been bringing tragedies annually to the Crucible in Sheffield, with a Hamlet in 2010 and last year’s Othello. That production was solid if flawed, traditionally staged but elevated by certain strong performances. It’s an assessment that might be directly transferred to Evans’s 2012 offering, Macbeth. Staged fully in the round and with …
King John (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
September 14, 2012
The RSC’s King John is now into its final week, and remains one of the best productions the RSC has produced in quite some time. I reviewed it in full back in July, but the production has continued to go from strength to strength. What remains remarkable about the production is its visceral intensity, turning …
2008: Macbeth (TR Warszawa) @ Guardian Online
August 13, 2012
By a bizarre quirk of international programming, this is the fourth Polish production of Macbeth I’ve seen. The most recent, by Teatr Piesn Kozla, remains one of the finest Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen, while Teatro Buiro Podrozy’s Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man? created a wild and hugely experimental aesthetic featuring stilts and a …
Much Ado about Nothing (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre
August 12, 2012
If the RSC’s recent production of Julius Caesar was the company’s attempt to “do” a version of Africa with an all-Black British cast, then Iqbal Khan’s new production of Much Ado About Nothing attempts to do the same for India. Both offer problems to my mind in terms of their relation to the rest of …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) (Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
The programme for Dmitry Krymov’s production, a special commission for the World Shakespeare Festival, depicts an acrobatic Jack Russell Terrier balancing on one paw on top of Shakespeare’s head. It is an image that says everything and nothing about the production that “turns Shakespeare on his head”, speaking to the conscious irreverence of the company’s …
King John (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
July 14, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/king-john/ The RSC’s King John is playing in rep with Richard III and A Soldier in Every Son: The Rise of the Aztecs as part of the “Nations at War” strand of this season’s work. It’s a fascinating notional concept, but one thing that Maria Aberg’s fresh reimagining of King John …
The Duchess of Malfi (Stage on Screen) @ Greenwich Theatre [on DVD]
June 28, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.stageonscreen.com/the-duchess-of-malfi.php A much briefer review to accompany my earlier piece on Stage on Screen’s production of Doctor Faustus, this time of Elizabeth Freestone’s The Duchess of Malfi. Cross-cast with the same company’s Volpone, Freestone’s take on Malfi is more straightforward than either, treating the play as a chamber piece in a …
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