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A Tender Thing (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford

Unlike the Olympics, the World Shakespeare Festival doesn’t have a Closing Ceremony. There is no grand climax, no image of Prospero/Shakespeare drowning his books and asking for our applause, not even a celebrity-studded event production. Instead, the last officially badged World Shakespeare Festival production to open was this: a two-hander played (on this occasion) to …

King John (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

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 …

Measure for Measure (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford

Onto a bare stage strode Raymond Coulthard’s Duke. Smiling to the audience, he raised his arms and, with commanding gestures, caused the house lights to be brought down, the music to stop and the on-stage lamps to illuminate. From its very beginning, Roxana Silbert’s new production of Measure for Measure established the Duke’s absolute control …

Dunsinane (National Theatre of Scotland/RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

It’s amusing to note that, while the Royal Shakespeare Company first produced David Greig’s Dunsinane in 2010, it only played in London; and it’s only in the National Theatre of Scotland’s staging of the RSC production that the play has finally come to Stratford-upon-Avon, after an outing at Edinburgh’s Lyceum. It’s less amusing to report …

The City Madam (RSC) @ The Swan, Stratford–upon–Avon

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/city-madam/ It’s so wonderful to have the Swan back in action. Not only is the space itself one of my favourite places to see theatre, but its fundamental artistic remit offers so much scope for invention and discovery. How often does one get to see a full-scale production of a play …

Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan – Revisited

Follow-up to Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford–upon–Avon from The Bardathon I’m just back from my second viewing of the RSC’s Cardenio, and it’s still great. This time, familiar with the new material and the reshaping of Double Falsehood, I had more leisure to enjoy the sparky relationship established between Oliver Rix’s Cardenio and …

Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford–upon–Avon

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/cardenio/ "Shakespeare’s ‘Lost Play’ Re-Imagined" runs the tag-line to this, the first full-scale new production in the Swan Theatre since its re-opening. The absence of John Fletcher (let alone Lewis Theobald) from this tag is perhaps inevitable given the RSC’s priorities, although both are fully credited within the wider publicity material. …

The Rape of Lucrece (RSC Studio) @ The Swan Theatre

The Rape of Lucrece was last staged at the Swan in 2006, as part of the Complete Works Festival. That production, directed by Greg Doran, was a relatively traditional reading of the poem, featuring five actors standing in a line with books in hand, each taking one of the poem’s “parts” and sharing narration. It …

The Tempest (Little Angel Theatre/RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/tempest/ What a treat to be back in the Swan. I haven’t been inside my favourite Stratford theatre since The Penelopiad back in 2007, and it’s wonderful to see it looking (on the inside, at any rate) exactly as it did before the closure, albeit with more comfortable seats. The first …

Macbett (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

I should preface this by saying that I’m not overly familiar with the work of Eugene Ionesco. I’ve studied a little of the ‘Theatre Of The Absurd’, but never actually seen a Ionesco production until last night. The opportunity, therefore, to see a response to Shakespeare written by one of the pioneers of a particularly …