What You Will (The Shakespeare Ensemble) @ online
August 25, 2020
Of the Shakespeare events produced during lockdown, The Shakespeare Ensemble’s What You Will is one of the ones to make the most of the affordances of digital media. Eschewing entirely the need for linear narration, the original live event hosted no fewer than nine separate streams occurring simultaneously, creating a virtual promenade performance that allowed audiences …
Twelfth Night (National Theatre) @ National Theatre At Home
April 24, 2020
The choice of the National Theatre to broadcast Simon Godwin’s Twelfth Night to homes to mark Shakespeare’s deathday on 23 April was a canny one; a crowd-pleasing comedy, with known quantities (Oliver Chris as Orsino and the headlining Tamsin Greig as a regendered Malvolia, the actors reunited from Green Wing) and an elaborate set courtesy of Soutra Gilmour. On a …
Twelfth Night (Shanty Productions)
October 29, 2018
Twelfth Night is Shanty Productions’ debut film, as well as the feature debut of director/adaptor Adam Smethurst. It’s quite a launch for an independent film company, with a truly excellent cast, fine use of the West Sussex countryside, and an effective publicity machine. And while the film betrays some awkwardness in its execution and some …
Twelfth Night (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
February 23, 2018
The RSC’s Christmas show, Twelfth Night, saw the creative team behind the popular Love’s Labour’s Lost/Won double bill (director Christopher Luscombe, designer Simon Higlett, composer Nigel Hess, movement director Jenny Arnold) reunite for a production that had all of the flaws and few of the redeeming features of the earlier productions. Twelfth Night had its …
I, Malvolio (Tim Crouch) @ Curve
May 24, 2014
I, Malvolio is one of the bravest shows I have seen in some time. How many pieces of theatre invite two young children to come on stage to hold a rope and kick out a chair while the title character prepares to hang himself? Although it carried an age warning of 11+, Tim Crouch’s one-man …
Twelfth Night @ Liverpool Everyman
April 6, 2014
There was an awful moment in the closing night of the new Liverpool Everyman’s inaugural production of Twelfth Night, as Malvolio’s yellow stockings emerged, feet uppermost, through a trapdoor for an inverted prison sequence. The mechanism lifting the actor was misdirected, meaning that his feet pushed at the stage, which cracked and splintered before the …
Twelfth Night (Filter) @ Curve, Leicester
September 16, 2013
This is a repost of a review written for Exeunt Magazine and is therefore not in usual Bardathon format. This production has been reviewed twice previously on The Bardathon, in its 2006 and 2008 iterations. Filter’s reinterpretation of Twelfth Night as rock gig is almost seven years old, dated from its first public outing in …
Twelfth Night (Propeller) @ Theatre Royal, Nottingham
May 30, 2013
Propeller’s new season is their first with no brand new production, the company instead touring revivals of its acclaimed 2006-07 Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew, the tour on which I first encountered them. Looking back over my backlog of reviews, Propeller have consistently been revelatory. Their all-male productions are no heritage gimmick, …
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Aloud!) @ The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford
January 6, 2013
Shakespeare Aloud! is the in-house acting team at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, offering what they refer to as a ‘jukebox Shakespeare’ for tourists, where bitesize segments, songs, speeches are delivered on demand to the visitors at the houses. It offers added value for visitors and seems to fit in with the casual engagement with Shakespeare …
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. …
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