The Revenger’s Tragedy (Cheek by Jowl/Piccolo) @ The Barbican Theatre
March 6, 2020
In producing a play that turns repeatedly on deceitful appearances, both in the spectacles of power and in staged tricks played on the unsuspecting, Cheek by Jowl’s Revenger’s Tragedy turned theatre itself into the grand metaphor. At the production’s opening, with a stage manager in a headset watching, Fausto Cabra’s Vindice clicked his fingers to …
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Barbican Theatre
June 9, 2019
The Knight of the Burning Pestle opened exactly as one might imagine a Cheek by Jowl production to open. To eerie music, a group of stone-faced actors emerged from behind a central white block on a bare stage, each bringing a chair with them. The chairs were arranged in deliberately unpatterned positions around the stage, …
Périclès, Prince de Tyr (Cheek by Jowl) @ Les Gémeaux, Sceaux
March 9, 2018
NB This piece is based on the first two public performance as well as the final two pre-opening rehearsal runs. I am grateful to Cheek by Jowl for so generously allowing me to observe the final stages of preparation. Cheek by Jowl last assayed Pericles in 1984/5 in an acclaimed production that Carole Wood declared …
The Winter’s Tale (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Barbican: A Year On
April 24, 2017
Regular readers will know that I’m writing a book on Cheek by Jowl, a labour of love that will hopefully be out in 2018. It’s been fifteen months since I went out to Paris to watch the first two performances of The Winter’s Tale after being afforded the extraordinary privilege of spending a few days …
The Winter’s Tale (Cheek by Jowl) @ Les Gemeaux
January 29, 2016
I was planning deliberately not to blog about Cheek by Jowl’s The Winter’s Tale. Not only did I see the first two previews, at a point when (even by Cheek by Jowl’s fluid standards) the show was still developing, but I also spent a few days in rehearsals with the company in December as part …
Measure for Measure (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Barbican – live stream
April 22, 2015
I have already written two reviews of Cheek by Jowl’s Measure for Measure (here and here), but tonight I had an opportunity to see it again, this time in the company’s first ever live broadcast. Firstly, it’s an extraordinary offering. A prestigious production being broadcast internationally for free online is a bold statement, and canny. …
Measure for Measure (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Silk Street Theatre, Barbican
April 17, 2015
These notes supplement my review of the production in Moscow, here. The production I travelled to Moscow to see performed before a native speaking audience has made it at last to the UK, with a new Duke, an updated design and English-language (Shakespearean) surtitles. Although Cheek by Jowl defines itself as a multinational company, performances …
Measure for Measure (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Pushkin Theatre, Moscow
November 24, 2014
At a hair under two hours long, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s Measure for Measure stripped the play back to its bare bones. Elbow’s subplot was gone, Pompey’s tenure as hangman reduced to a few fragmented lines, Lucio’s relationship with the disguised Duke barely alluded to. In place of the intersecting subplots, Donnellan’s direction asserted …
Ubu Roi (Cheek by Jowl) @ Theatre of Nations, Moscow
November 23, 2014
Normally I would not be writing about a production of a Jarry play on this blog. However, given that the play itself draws liberally on Macbeth, Richard III and Hamlet; that this production is by a company about whom I am preparing to write a book; and that I’ve travelled to Moscow in order to …
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Cheek by Jowl) @ Warwick Arts Centre
February 5, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.cheekbyjowl.com/tis_pity_shes_a_whore.php Cheek by Jowl have revolutionised my understanding of early modern dramatists time and again – Shakespeare with its Twelfth Night, Middleton with its The Changeling, and now John Ford with a stunning new ‘Tis Pity. This was my third production of the play following an excellent student version at Warwick …
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