Edward II (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
March 2, 2019
Nick Bagnall’s new production of Edward II, reimagined for a candlelit indoor playhouse, collapsed its imagined spaces from the very opening. Gathering around the corpse of Edward I, the company (led by Richard Bremmer’s Archbishop of Canterbury) sang a Latin requiem and then crowned Edward II (Tom Stuart). Edward then began speaking his own summons …
Romeo and Juliet (RSC) @ Nottingham Theatre Royal
February 21, 2019
An entirely unexpected fight broke out at the RSC’s Romeo and Juliet last night, and it wasn’t on stage. As several audience members took action to remonstrate with and ultimately eject someone who was expressing their disapproval for the production’s choices, many other audience members found themselves missing the meeting of the lovers. And when …
Juliet & Romeo (Lost Dog) @ Nottingham Playhouse
January 26, 2019
What if Romeo and Juliet escaped the crypt together? Lost Dog’s dance production is not the first to explore this question, but perhaps offered one of the more innovative approaches to answering it. This two-person show (plus, at this performance at least, the outstanding BSL interpretation of Clare Edwards) invited its audience into the therapy …
Macbeth (National Theatre) @ Nottingham Theatre Royal
January 23, 2019
I didn’t hate the National Theatre’s Macbeth when I saw it last April, but I was underwhelmed. The production has since closed in London, been re-cast, and is now touring the country, opening last night at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal. While the production has an entirely new cast, it remained very close to the London version, …
Timon of Athens (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
January 17, 2019
It’s impossible to get away from Simon Godwin at the moment. His RSC Hamlet has only just finished touring; his Antony and Cleopatra at the National has been winning awards, and he’s just about to take up the artistic directorship of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC, as well as directing a production in …
Richard II (Almeida/NT Live) @ Nottingham Broadway Cinema
January 15, 2019
For those who remember the Berliner Ensemble’s extraordinary Richard II, which came to the UK in 2006 as part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival, Joe Hill-Gibbins’s new production of the play for the Almeida may have struck a chord. As with that production, this stripped back Richard II – barely 90 minutes long without …
Doctor Faustus (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
December 16, 2018
Paulette Randall’s first production for the Globe – and, according to her bio, her first production of an early modern play – made an important statement, taking a play that focuses on the archetypal white male overreacher and casting Jocelyn Jee Esien as the titular Doctor Faustus. It’s part of the Globe’s agenda-setting commitment to …
Macbeth (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Macbeth – which of course, may well have been adapted for the King’s Men after the company’s acquisition of the Blackfriars – seems ideally suited to the chiaroscuro potential of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. More so than any production I’ve seen there since The Duchess of Malfi, Robert Hastie’s production played with the sounds that …
Antony and Cleopatra (National Theatre/NT Live) @ Broadway Cinema
December 7, 2018
In November, Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo became the first pair of co-leads in over thirty years to win the two Best Actor prizes at the Evening Standard Theatre awards. The casting alone, perhaps, made this not entirely unexpected; two Oscar-nominated actors in a big prestige National Theatre production directed by Simon Godwin, in one …
Tamburlaine (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
November 17, 2018
Oh, how I’ve missed Michael Boyd. While there’s much I admire about Gregory Doran’s work, the RSC’s output has been at best variable for the last few years, often seeming to be in competition with the thrust stage and falling too often into dully conservative furrows. Boyd’s tenure as Artistic Director was far from perfect, …
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