Henry V (Donmar Warehouse) @ Broadway Cinema via NT Live
April 23, 2022
In a pre-show interview that served as paratext to the NT Live broadcast of the Donmar’s Henry V, Kit Harington spoke candidly about his own experience of addiction and recovery. His substance use, at a time when his global fame was at a peak, reflected one response to the pressures and expectations of fame; his subsequent recovery allowed …
Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet (New Adventures) @ Sadler’s Wells/Nottingham Broadway
October 23, 2019
Illuminations’ new film of Matthew Bourne’s reimagining of Romeo and Juliet is a thrilling addition to the canon of dance adaptations of the play. Taking the classic Sergei Prokofiev score, but setting the ballet in a near-future ‘Verona Institute’ for the incarceration of young people, Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet is a raw and moving piece that fascinatingly …
The Taming of the Shew (RSC Live from Stratford-upon-Avon @ Broadway Cinema
June 6, 2019
I’ve already written at length about Justin Audibert’s The Taming of the Shrew at the RSC, and a second viewing of it – this time courtesy of free tickets to the live broadcast, with thanks to the RSC social media team – helped clarify much of what makes the production work, but gave me little further insight …
All is True @ Broadway Cinema
February 13, 2019
All is True is the obvious culmination of Kenneth Branagh’s career – after thirty years of making Shakespeare films, he has finally cast himself as Shakespeare. From Branagh’s silicone-augmented performance to the Patrick Doyle score to the sun-bathed bucolic backdrops, All is True is a Branagh film through and through, for good and for ill. …
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 …
Troilus and Cressida (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ Broadway Cinema
November 14, 2018
As a regular at Nottingham Broadway’s screenings of the Live from Stratford-upon-Avon broadcasts, it was dispiriting to see an audience barely a third of the usual size at the broadcast of the rarely-staged Troilus and Cressida; doubly so when this was one of the RSC’s most pleasingly innovative productions for some time. Following the Globe’s …
The Merry Wives of Windsor (RSC/Live from Stratford-upon-Avon) @ Broadway, Nottingham
September 13, 2018
I’ll get this out of the way first; the opening sequence of the RSC’s The Merry Wives of Windsor is in competition for the worst thing I’ve ever seen on the RSC stage. Over the silhouette of a town was heard the voice of a messenger arriving at William Shakespeare’s lodgings, bearing a letter from …
Macbeth (RSC Live from Stratford) @ Nottingham Broadway
April 11, 2018
At the moment of Duncan’s death, a timer set at two hours appeared on the upstage wall, and began counting down. Polly Findlay’s Macbeth – and Christopher Ecclestone’s titular monarch – shifted from that point into an inevitable decline, the ever-present clock reminding Macbeth of the inevitable consequences of his fatal action. And with two …
Julius Caesar (Donmar/Illuminations) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
July 14, 2017
I missed all performances of Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeare Trilogy when they originally played at the Donmar and, latterly, King’s Cross, so I was thrilled to hear that they would be coming to cinemas. The suddenness of Julius Caesar’s appearance, and the relative lack of marketing, were hugely disappointing, however. Whereas NT Live and Live from …
The Tempest (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
January 11, 2017
Much has been made about the technical innovations of the RSC’s current production of The Tempest. Taking the (somewhat tenuous) premise that the play was designed as Shakespeare’s greatest experiment with the cutting-edge technologies of his own time, the RSC has partnered with Intel and Andy Serkis’s Imaginarium studio to create a series of avatars …
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