Love’s Sacrifice (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford
May 18, 2015
It is a little dispiriting to find the first of this summer’s Swan plays is another Caroline revenge tragedy in which women are dragged around by their hair and thrown to the ground. This directorial shorthand for women-being-treated-badly is becoming worryingly de rigueur, and its shock-value diminishes with constant repetition and normalisation, especially at the …
The Broken Heart (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
March 22, 2015
My complaint about tragedies at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse so far has been the productions’ frustrating collective failure to realise that this is a space in which less can be more. In what seems to me to be a lack of confidence in the work of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, the tendency has been to ramp up …
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
December 6, 2014
The 2014 winter season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse brings together a range of plays that exemplify what Susan Bennett and others refer to as the ‘Jacobean’ – less a specific historical period and more an aesthetic established as oppositional to Shakespeare, foregrounding sex, violence and abandon. This aesthetic usually updates the setting and cultural …
The Witch of Edmonton (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
October 26, 2014
(note – this review is of a preview performance) The Roaring Girls season, discussed in previous posts on this blog, ended with an entirely untypical coda. Directed by a man (Gregory Doran), given an early modern setting and appearing divorced from the statements about feminism and gender roles within the RSC that had characterised the …
‘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 …
Something to get excited about
August 12, 2011
Cheek by Jowl are doing ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. This is a very good thing. http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/33195/cheek-by-jowl-to-stage-tis-pity-shes-a
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore @ Liverpool Everyman
October 2, 2010
Writing about web page http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/show/Tis_Pity_Shes_A_Whore/215.aspx An initial glance through the cast list of Chris Meade’s new ‘Tis Pity at the Liverpool Everyman betrayed from the start that this was a severely pared-down affair. Donado, Grimaldi, Bergetto, Poggio, Richardetto and Philotis were all cut, along with their subplots. What remained was a tightly-focussed domestic drama, drawing …
‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (WUDS) @ Warwick Arts Centre Studio
May 1, 2009
Writing about web page http://www.wuds.co.uk/ Warwick University Drama Society’s new production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore promised a "noir sheen", and a sheen was duly delivered. Femme fatale? Check, in Maria Askew’s seductive Hippolita. Moody hard men lighting cigarettes under dim street lighting? Check, as Jack Churchill’s skinheaded Grimaldi (referencing the later noir of …
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