Lear is Dead (Nine Years Theatre) @ Drama Centre Theatre
July 28, 2021
What are we doing when we commemorate the dead, when we tell the stories of our leaders after they have gone? Nelson Chia’s reimagining of King Lear for Nine Years Theatre from 2018 (made available to World Shakespeare Congress delegates) asks as much of the storytellers as of those whose story is being told. In doing so, the …
The Tempest (Contemporary Legend Theatre)
July 27, 2021
Tsui Hark’s spectacular, operatic Tempest, co-directed with Wu Hsing-kuo (who also plays Prospero), is a mesmerising take on Shakespeare’s play. Available on the MIT Global Shakespeares site, and made available in its 2004 incarnation to delegates at the 2021 World Shakespeare Congress, it’s an extraordinary show of power as a truly magical Prospero co-ordinates an …
The Tragedy of Macbeth @ Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio
July 26, 2021
The opening of Tang Shu-Wing’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (recorded in 2019, and made available to World Shakespeare Congress delegates) announces the arrival of a modern couple in a dream world, through which they will navigate the world of Macbeth in the guise of that play’s two protagonists. The dream framing is never given more …
Hamlet @ Theatre Royal Windsor
July 25, 2021
A burst of applause unusual in UK theatres greeeted the entrance of the cast of Hamlet, who walked onstage in a line and stood facing the audience in what looked like a premature curtain call. Perhaps the applause was conservative (this was Windsor, after all), a throwback to an earlier time when the arrival of …
Ophelia (Cake Theatrical Productions) @ Esplanade Theatre Studio
July 22, 2021
‘My name is Ophelia, and today I will begin by playing Hamlet’. There are many great lines in Natalie Hennedige and Michelle Tan’s Ophelia, performed in English at the Esplanade Theatre Studio in March 2016, but the play is perhaps best summed up in this one, spoken by Jo Kukathas’s Ophelia. This is a deconstruction of …
The Tempest (Nottingham Playhouse and Lakeside Arts Centre) @ Lakeside Arts Centre Car Park
July 3, 2021
Storms were scheduled for the matinee of Nottingham Playhouse and Lakeside Arts Centre’s outdoor Tempest, a co-production aimed at reintroducing family audiences to outdoor theatre as part of both venues’ reopening strategy; however, the sun shone brightly throughout. Martin Berry’s 80-minute production (also The Bardathon’s first bit of in-person Shakespeare for well over a year) …
1 Henry VI Open Rehearsal Run-through (RSC) @ online
June 25, 2021
The three weeks of the RSC 1 Henry VI Open Rehearsal Project – previously discussed on The Bardathon here – culminated on June 23rd with a full rehearsal run through in the Swan rehearsal rooms, as the midsummer light waned through the windows around the room. Running at a stripped-down two hours, this was still a …
Volpone (Red Bull) @ YouTube
June 15, 2021
The Red Bull’s Zoom-based production of Volpone reprised a celebrated 2012 production (both directed by Jesse Berger) in a fast and funny version that entertainingly capitalised on the restrictions of performing in isolation. Volpone is a play that always seems to feel timely even if, as here, it leans into the period setting, and the play’s …
The Winter’s Tale (RSC) @ BBC4
April 26, 2021
It’s become customary to see theatre shows performed in empty auditoria over the last year, but perhaps none quite so grandly empty as the RSC’s new Winter’s Tale. This is a production that has skipped over its own ‘gap of time’ – fully rehearsed but pulled just before it was due to open back in …
Romeo and Juliet (National Theatre) @ Sky Arts
April 5, 2021
A group of actors gather in a rehearsal room, chatting and laughing; we cut to them sat in chairs, making up three sides of a large square. It looks like meet-and-greet day, only there’s no director, no box set to show. Instead, it’s one of the actors, Lucian Msamati, who speaks, and he’s speaking the Prologue. …
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