Galatea (Edward’s Boys) @ King Edward VI School
March 18, 2014
I first encountered Lyly in the form of a heavily cut production of Endymion performed by the junior boys of King Edward VI School in 2009, back before they were even known as Edward’s Boys. Having missed their 2010 Mother Bombie, it was something of a delight to return five years later and find Endymion’s …
Pericles (Ketterer’s Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute
February 23, 2014
For those of us who knew Lizz Ketterer, even partly or briefly, she remains a very present absence three years after her passing. The Trust set up in her memory raises funds to allow one promising young early modernist each year the opportunity to attend the RSC’s summer school; the bench in the garden of …
The Duchess of Malfi (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
February 14, 2014
It is an absolute joy to see the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse up and running. Nestled in the Globe’s belly, jutting far into the foyer, this reimagining of a Jacobean indoor theatre is beautiful and invigorating. While its relative newness isn’t entirely to its advantage at the moment (the paint work just a little too crisp, …
Coriolanus (Donmar/NT Live) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
January 31, 2014
The Hiddleston effect is a very tangible thing. As the stalwart Emma Freud reminded international audiences in what was, frankly, the most banal interval interview NT Live has yet managed (which is saying something), Tom Hiddleston was recently voted Sexiest Man Alive by MTV, and his Coriolanus attracted the youngest audience I’ve yet seen to …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Propeller) @ Sheffield Lyceum
January 30, 2014
The Bardathon has had a slow start this year, as writing and marking priorities haven’t given me a huge amount of time for theatre. New reviews will be further delayed as my first show of the year, Propeller’s wonderful A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was seen as part of a module trip. As many of my …
An Age of Kings (BBC/Illuminations)
December 27, 2013
In 1960, the BBC undertook an extraordinary project. Shakespeare’s eight history plays covering the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III were broadcast in fifteen hour-long episodes with a single ensemble company. Rehearsed quickly and recorded live, the films have been unavailable commercially until now, …
Henry V (Michael Grandage Company) @ The Noel Coward Theatre
December 17, 2013
Following the underwhelming and frustratingly conservative Midsummer Night’s Dream, I didn’t have high hopes for the second Shakespeare in Michael Grandage’s West End season. With promotion once again based entirely around a celebrity actor (Jude Law, returning to the director-actor partnership of Hamlet), a theatre and audience unsuited to the interventionist or radical political readings …
Titus Andronicus (New Theatre) @ The New Theatre, Nottingham
December 5, 2013
I’ve spent much of the last week sticking up post-it notes on posters for the New Theatre’s production of Titus Andronicus, adding ‘and George Peele’s’ after the headline banner ‘William Shakespeare’s’. Titus still feels like a discovery when revived, a first for many of its audiences, and recent issues such as the authorship question (which …
Richard III (Silents Now) @ York Theatre Royal
November 27, 2013
Regular readers may be interested to know that I manage the Twitter hashtag #shaxfilm, an open online extension of my third year specialist module on Screen Shakespeares. The first film we study on this module is Frank Benson’s 1911 Richard III, filmed at the (then) Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon with a fixed camera, preserving …
Honoria and Mammon (The Owle Schreame) @ St Giles-in-the-Fields Church
November 25, 2013
James Shirley’s Honoria and Mammon appears never to have been performed in the three hundred and fifty years since it was printed during the Interregnum, and its world premiere in the church where Shirley is buried, as part of The Owle Schreame’s ‘Cannibal Valour‘ season, was therefore doubly significant. Playing it uncut, Shirley’s emblematic moral …
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