A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Theatre for a New Audience) @ Nottingham Broadway
June 22, 2015
I’m yet, to my memory, to see a professional Shakespeare production in the US, so the decision to film and broadcast Julie Taymor’s spectacular thrust-stage take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a welcome one. Notwithstanding Spiderman (and perhaps that show’s cataclysmic production history unfairly detracts from the ambition and achievement therein), Taymor’s proven ability …
Romeo and Juliet in Harlem (dir. Aleta Chapelle) @ Warwick Arts Centre Cinema
April 25, 2015
The second of the two films in Warwick’s annual Shakespeare Film Day was a very special occasion – the first screening in the UK (probably) of the first Shakespeare film made by an African-American woman. Aleta Chappelle’s most significant feature as director to date, which used a crowd-funded trailer to attract funding, is a low budget …
Haider (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj) @ Warwick Arts Centre Cinema
The third of Vishal Bhardwaj’s trilogy of Indian Shakespeare adaptations, following Maqbool and the excellent Omkara, is his most ambitious yet, and possibly the most aggressively political Shakespeare film I have ever seen. The film, set at the height of troubles in Kashmir in 1995, has been the subject of a huge amount of controversy, …
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 …
King Lear (Northern Broadsides) @ West Yorkshire Playhouse
April 12, 2015
A collaboration between great guest director and great company can create really wonderful work. The last time I saw a production by Jonathan Miller, it was his wonderful Hamlet at the Tobacco Factory, the first time that company had been directed by someone other than Andrew Hilton. And Northern Broadsides are always a joy to …
William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction by Stanley Wells
April 5, 2015
This month, Oxford University Press publishes William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction by one of the most esteemed living authors on Shakespeare, Stanley Wells. Wells, in addition to being one of our finest textual scholars, has devoted much of the last decade to a series of books aimed at a popular market, expanding his role …
Hamlet (Royal Exchange) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
March 28, 2015
Watching the Royal Exchange production of Hamlet on the big screen, in a specially recorded film version (still performed in front of an audience, but with a certain amount of editing work to make the most of key images), brought home to me the significance of much of the production’s work. While I enjoyed the …
Love’s Labour’s Won [Much Ado about Nothing] (RSC/Live from Stratford) @ The Broadway, Nottingham
March 6, 2015
Where Christopher Luscombe’s Love’s Labour’s Lost was a pleasant surprise, its self-parodic wit trumping the pull towards nostalgia and self-indulgence that the period setting might have implied, Love’s Labour’s Won had the opposite effect on me. Here, a series of uncomfortable decisions underwritten by unpleasant assumptions marred a production that had a great deal of …
Macbeth (Filter) @ Liverpool Everyman
February 22, 2015
Filter is one of my favourite theatre companies, whether for its wonderfully anarchic Shakespeare productions or for its thought-provoking new writing, so it is with no small regret that I have to confess to disappointment at Macbeth. The raw materials of Filter’s work – an exposed production of sound, musicians at the heart of action, …
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