The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
January 31, 2017
Just over a decade since I saw the RSC’s Canterbury Tales company offer a fascinating script-in-hand staging of The Two Noble Kinsmen, it was a pleasure to return to the Swan at last for a full-scale professional production, especially in the hands of Blanche McIntyre, fresh from a superb Noises Off at Nottingham Playhouse. While …
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 …
Richard II (National Theatre/Illuminations) on DVD
December 11, 2016
We owe Illuminations a huge debt of gratitude. Its ongoing ‘Screen Plays’ series, reviving and making available classic television productions, has already brought us An Age of Kings and The Wars of the Roses, and now it delivers a beautifully transferred recording of Deborah Warner’s seminal Richard II, the 1997 television version of the 1995 …
Lear/Cordelia (1623 Theatre Company) @ Derby Theatres Studio
November 20, 2016
1623 Theatre’s latest production was one of their most ambitious to date: a one-act adaptation of King Lear followed by a new response play, Farrah Chaudhry’s Cordelia, with an accompanying set of workshops, talks and resources designed to link the play to dementia support and broader accessibility. On the evening I saw it, a huge …
Pericles (University College Cork/LittleShoes Productions) @ The Unitarian Church, Cork
I spent the first half of last week in Cork for the event ‘Celebrating Shakespeare 400: Performing Pericles, Prince of Tyre’. Part of the extensive Irish Shakespeare festival commemorating the 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, this event was billed as offering what appears to be only the second ever performance of Pericles in Ireland, coupled …
The Complete Deaths (Spymonkey) @ Hull Truck
September 10, 2016
It’s almost thirty years since the Reduced Shakespeare Company launched its mission of comprehensive compression, culminating in a repeated, increasingly speedy depiction of all of the deaths in Hamlet. Spymonkey, in their first Shakespeare-themed show, have now taken up their mantle with a full show devoted entirely to staging all of the onstage deaths in …
Hamlet (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
August 4, 2016
Seeing the same ensemble of actors take on Hamlet two days after Cymbeline, I was struck by the demands placed on a company performing these two long plays together – the mercifully shorter Hamlet still ran to an energetic three hours and fifteen minutes. And this is one of the consistently strongest ensembles I remember …
Richard III (Almeida Live) @ Nottingham Broadway
July 22, 2016
I’d been warned to expect it, but even so, the scene of Ralph Fiennes’s Richard III raping Aislin McGuckin’s Queen Elizabeth towards the end of Rupert Goold’s new production came out of nowhere. Falling late in a mostly intelligent, finely characterised take on the play, Fiennes and McGuckin pulled out all the stops for their …
The Taming of the Shrew @ Shakespeare’s Globe
May 17, 2016
NB – this review is of a production still in preview. In fact, not only was the Globe’s new production of The Taming of the Shrew still in preview, but the understudies weren’t yet fully rehearsed, as became apparent as the production’s interval stretched out to half an hour with still no sign of the …
The Hollow Crown: Henry VI Part 1 @ The BBC
May 9, 2016
Given the relative monarchism and conservatism that often marks the BBC’s Shakespeare adaptations, it’s quite something to hear the new Hollow Crown beginning with Judi Dench in voiceover intoning choice excerpts of Ulysses’ famous ‘degree’ speech from Troilus and Cressida. With a slight pause before them, the words “Take but degree away, and mark what …
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