The Wars of the Roses (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
April 29, 2022
In the foyers of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Jack Cade’s face stared out from wanted posters. As the production itself began, Aaron Sidwell’s rebel stumbled across the stage, followed by the roaring mob who Clifford and Buckingham had earlier sent after their erstwhile leader. They caught and tore apart Cade bodily on the stage, holding …
Henry VI: Rebellion (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
April 28, 2022
The unique problem facing any stand-alone production of Henry VI, Part 2 is the suspended ending. Other plays that are part of a sequence – 3 Henry VI, 1 Henry IV, for instance – still manage to reach a point of conclusion or at least pause; 2 Henry VI, by contrast, spends its running time …
Much Ado About Nothing (RSC) @ BBC iPlayer
April 21, 2022
Roy Alexander Weise’s Much Ado about Nothing is a landmark RSC production in several respects. It’s the first full-scale main-stage production directed by a Black director at the RSC (in 2022!), and the first ‘repeat’ production to interrupt the RSC’s now eight-year project to stage the whole canon. The filmed version of the production also deviates from …
The Winter’s Tale (RSC) @ BBC4
April 26, 2021
It’s become customary to see theatre shows performed in empty auditoria over the last year, but perhaps none quite so grandly empty as the RSC’s new Winter’s Tale. This is a production that has skipped over its own ‘gap of time’ – fully rehearsed but pulled just before it was due to open back in …
Measure for Measure (RSC/Live from Stratford-upon-Avon) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
August 1, 2019
Gregory Doran’s new Measure for Measure seemed, at times, to be almost defiantly setting itself against ‘relevance’. Eschewing the contemporary settings of several recent productions that have more explicitly responded to the #MeToo moment and the abuses of power in the highest offices (whether political, entertainment, sports), Doran returned to the text’s setting of Vienna, but updated …
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 …
The Taming of the Shrew (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
April 4, 2019
The setting for the RSC’s 2019 The Taming of the Shrew, the latest in a long line of attempts to find a way of making the play palatable as a comedy for the twenty-first century, ventured into the realms of speculative fiction. Director Justin Audibert’s concept imagined an alternative sixteenth century in which women were …
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 …
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