Juliet & Romeo (Lost Dog) @ Nottingham Playhouse
January 26, 2019
What if Romeo and Juliet escaped the crypt together? Lost Dog’s dance production is not the first to explore this question, but perhaps offered one of the more innovative approaches to answering it. This two-person show (plus, at this performance at least, the outstanding BSL interpretation of Clare Edwards) invited its audience into the therapy …
The Revenger’s Tragedy @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 2, 2016
NB This review is based on a preview performance. The most striking image of Fiona Buffini’s new production of The Revenger’s Tragedy was that of the opening, with a narrow shaft of light from on high illuminating a skull sat on a chair. Then, to the sound of T-Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’, the Duke, …
The Duchess of Malfi @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 4, 2015
This is a repost of a review originally submitted to Exeunt Magazine. To the sound of seagulls and a ship’s horn, assorted servants, ladies, nobles and clergy from a range of time periods start criss-crossing the stage, piling up luggage and making preparations. Fiona Buffini’s new production of Webster’s tragedy for Nottingham Playhouse begins in …
Richard III @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 7, 2013
Nottingham Playhouse is advertising its new production of Richard III as the ‘first major staging’ since the discovery of the historical king’s body under that now-infamous car park in Leicester. While this seems a little ungenerous in its implications about Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, the joy of this production will be the chance to see the …
The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged [Revised] (Reduced Shakespeare Company) @ Nottingham Playhouse
November 4, 2013
It would be churlish to react with academic indignation to The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged. The Reduced Shakespeare Company has existed for longer than I’ve been alive, and the Complete Works itself for twenty-six years. While the show may continue to present itself as a radical overturning of Shakespearean/British snobbery and a riotous romp …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Custom/Practice) @ Nottingham Playhouse
March 1, 2013
Rae McKen’s new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opened with a framing device that left no doubt as to the production’s intended audience. Set in a modern detention room, a group of assorted school stereotypes assembled, bickering over mobile phones and classroom politics. After a short while, their velvet-jacketed teacher ‘Mr Goodfellow’ entered the …
Romeo and Juliet (Headlong Theatre) @ Nottingham Playhouse
March 15, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.headlongtheatre.co.uk/productions/production_details.php?Title=Romeo_and_Juliet_&production_id=29 Robert Icke, director of Headlong Theatre’s new touring Romeo and Juliet, has clearly been taking notes from company director Rupert Goold. As with the last Headlong show I experienced, King Lear, everything up to and including the kitchen sink (in this case, an open air ice-cream stall) had been thrown …
Double Falsehood @ Nottingham Playhouse
October 12, 2010
Writing about web page http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/whats-on/misc/double-falsehood/ To call this "The First Public Reading" of Double Falsehood, as the website promises, wasn’t entirely accurate (see the KDC production and our own modest, but still public, reading at Warwick), but this was at least the first public reading of the play, since the publication of Brean Hammond’s excellent …