Macbeth (Sheffield Theatres) @ The Crucible
September 15, 2012
Daniel Evans has been bringing tragedies annually to the Crucible in Sheffield, with a Hamlet in 2010 and last year’s Othello. That production was solid if flawed, traditionally staged but elevated by certain strong performances. It’s an assessment that might be directly transferred to Evans’s 2012 offering, Macbeth. Staged fully in the round and with …
King John (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
September 14, 2012
The RSC’s King John is now into its final week, and remains one of the best productions the RSC has produced in quite some time. I reviewed it in full back in July, but the production has continued to go from strength to strength. What remains remarkable about the production is its visceral intensity, turning …
2008: Macbeth (TR Warszawa) @ Guardian Online
August 13, 2012
By a bizarre quirk of international programming, this is the fourth Polish production of Macbeth I’ve seen. The most recent, by Teatr Piesn Kozla, remains one of the finest Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen, while Teatro Buiro Podrozy’s Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man? created a wild and hugely experimental aesthetic featuring stilts and a …
Much Ado about Nothing (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre
August 12, 2012
If the RSC’s recent production of Julius Caesar was the company’s attempt to “do” a version of Africa with an all-Black British cast, then Iqbal Khan’s new production of Much Ado About Nothing attempts to do the same for India. Both offer problems to my mind in terms of their relation to the rest of …
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) (Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
The programme for Dmitry Krymov’s production, a special commission for the World Shakespeare Festival, depicts an acrobatic Jack Russell Terrier balancing on one paw on top of Shakespeare’s head. It is an image that says everything and nothing about the production that “turns Shakespeare on his head”, speaking to the conscious irreverence of the company’s …
Isles of Wonder
July 29, 2012
There’s so much been written on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony that I certainly don’t feel the need to talk at length about the event. Suffice to say, I thought it was a bold and wonderful opening, celebratory while keeping its tongue at least partly in its cheek, self-deprecating and triumphant. The Bond/Queen and Bean …
The Hollow Crown: Henry V @ BBC2
July 23, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00s91rf It remains to Thea Sharrock to steer the BBC’s Hollow Crown series to a dignified and lavish conclusion with Henry V, which brings Tom Hiddleston’s young king to worldly maturity and sees the return of most of the actors whose parts have transcended individual films (although not York/Aumerle nor, curiously, …
The Hollow Crown: 2 Henry IV @ BBC2
July 14, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00s91qj Part Three of the BBC’s Hollow Crown series, again directed by Richard Eyre, concludes the Henry IV plays. Once again it is a lavish, visually rich, sensitively acted interpretation, with a great deal to recommend it. But where 1 Henry IV was full of life, variety, powerhouse acting and intelligent …
King John (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/king-john/ The RSC’s King John is playing in rep with Richard III and A Soldier in Every Son: The Rise of the Aztecs as part of the “Nations at War” strand of this season’s work. It’s a fascinating notional concept, but one thing that Maria Aberg’s fresh reimagining of King John …
Troilus and Cressida (1623 Theatre) @ Online
July 9, 2012
Writing about web page http://www.unclepandarus.com A fascinating experiment from my friends at 1623 Theatre began in earnest today. At the website www.unclepandarus.com, a coughing, bearded soldier is delivering daily video updates from an underground bunker. In the aftermath of a nuclear war that killed ten billion souls, fought between two rival powers over a celebrity …
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