The Tempest @ Shakespeare’s Globe
May 13, 2013
My first visit to Shakespeare’s Globe was a school trip in 2000 to see Vanessa Redgrave’s Prospero in a production that is still notable among Tempests I’ve seen for many reasons, not least an ethereal, androgynous Ariel and a complete, spectacular masque with goddesses appearing on high. Jeremy Herrin’s new production was the first I …
As You Like It (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
May 5, 2013
Playing in repertory with Hamlet, Maria Aberg’s new production of As You Like It shared more than just a company that reunited the leading players from her spectacular King John last year. The same foundational level of muddy soil that was exposed throughout Hamlet to finish that play in an upturned graveyard emerged again here, but as the end result of the gradual unpacking …
A Yorkshire Tragedy (Shakespeare Institute Players) @ The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon
May 4, 2013
Sixty years ago the postgraduate students of the Shakespeare Institute of Stratford-upon-Avon launched its new dramatic society with a production of the apocryphal A Yorkshire Tragedy, attributed on its first publication to Shakespeare. Sixty years later, and with the play now confidently attributed to Thomas Middleton, the Players celebrated their anniversary with a fresh imagining …
Hamlet (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Creating smallness on the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is no easy feat, but David Farr’s new production of Hamlet shrunk Stratford’s flagship theatre down to an almost nostalgic depiction of a community hall. School benches and gym bars flanked the thrust stage; fencing foils lined the walls, and a small proscenium stage marked the upstage focus. …
Gorboduc (Shakespeare’s Globe Read Not Dead) @ The Parliament Room, Inner Temple
April 28, 2013
Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc is often spoken of as the template for English tragedy. The first play to be written in blank verse and the first to employ dumb shows with its Chorus, the 1561 play establishes many of the conventions that would characterise revenge tragedy especially during the early years of the …
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (SATTF) @ The Tobacco Factory
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is the first Shakespearean comedy tackled at the Tobacco Factory’s annual season since a sophisticated, gentle Comedy of Errors two years ago. Director Andrew Hilton, approaching another early comedy, took a remarkably similar approach: Edwardians in Western Europe, influence from comedy of manners and a literate, polite approach to the …
Caesar Must Die (dir. Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani)
April 21, 2013
Italy’s official nomination for the 2013 Best Foreign Language Oscar is an extremely odd beast. Ostensibly a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a group of Italian prisoners putting on a production of Julius Caesar, the film is framed by the climax of the real production, as Salvatore Striano’s Brutus seeks a willing hand on whose sword to …
Much Ado About Nothing (dir. Joss Whedon) @ Shakespeare Association of America conference, Toronto
March 30, 2013
Joss Whedon introduced a special advance preview screening of his new movie of Much Ado about Nothing last night (alas, via pre-recorded video) with a tribute to the teachers and professors who had instilled him with a love of Shakespeare. In allowing the Shakespeare Association of America annual conference in Toronto to get an early …
The Winter’s Tale (RSC) @ The Theatre Royal, Nottingham
March 29, 2013
In my pre-show lecture for this production of The Winter’s Tale, I talked about the notion that this is a play of two halves, reflected through the distorting mirror of the bear, which asks us to consider ideas of rebirth and circles (though the question of whether these are redemptive or vicious remains open). Lucy …
Richard III (SATTF) @ The Tobacco Factory, Bristol
March 24, 2013
I’m on record (well, Twitter) as being relatively sceptical about the recent finds in Leicester. The convenience of the archaeological team setting out to find Richard and discovering the trench and skeleton more or less on the first day of digging strikes me as being rather convenient, and I’m inclined to exercise a healthy caution. …
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