Shakespeare
As You Like It, Tobacco Factory, BristolWednesday, 19 February 2014
Andrew Hilton, the creative force that drives the consistently excellent Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, might be playing safe by returning to a play he put originally put on in 2003. But “As You Like It”, for all its light touches, is a... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, BarbicanTuesday, 11 February 2014
An insider once told me that you get a grant for including puppets in a production. Which may account for the amount of crap puppetry haphazardly applied in the theatre. That certainly can't be said about the work of husband-and-husband team Adrian... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Tom MorrisTuesday, 04 February 2014
Two lanky, totemic marionettes with stern carved faces – one male, one female – coast haltingly around a rehearsal room in Bristol. They are being operated from inside metal framing by actors who coax tentative movement into arms and necks. “... Read more... |
King Lear, National TheatreFriday, 24 January 2014
Sam Mendes thinks King Lear is a bigger play than it is. In a new staging he directs at the National Theatre, he wants it to be about a convulsion of nations, a reordering of borders, bombing populations. When Lear arrives to carve his kingdom into... Read more... |
DVD: An Age of KingsFriday, 17 January 2014
Released here last month, nearly five years after it was issued in America, The Age of Kings is a five-disc glory. It comprises the BBC production of Shakespeare's eight English history plays – Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V, the... Read more... |
Coriolanus, Donmar WarehouseThursday, 19 December 2013
In his later life Shakespeare, who never ducked ways to define a hero, offered the public a challenge: Coriolanus is a professional warrior, deaf to reason, patrician hater of people power. To beat all, this man’s man’s a mother’s boy. In a world... Read more... |
Richard II, BarbicanFriday, 13 December 2013
Richard II arrives in London after a highly successful Stratford run and while the glow of David Tennant’s Hamlet resides still in the memory. Surprisingly, the pleasure of the production lies not so much in dazzle as solidity. This doesn’t give a... Read more... |
Henry V, Noel Coward TheatreWednesday, 04 December 2013
It has been a hard slog, but he's emerging victorious in the end. Essentially, Shakespeare's Henry V tracks a military campaign. In Act One, the eponymous king declares war on France. By Act Five, against the odds, he has won and is sealing an... Read more... |
Immigration riots and the hand of ShakespeareSunday, 17 November 2013
It begins on the street, nastily. An immigrant has got his hands on an English woman. Trouble is brewing. Then there is a dispute about money, involving a “Lombard” – the identification originally applied to immigrants from Lombardy in northern... Read more... |
Arena: The National Theatre, Part One - The Dream, BBC FourFriday, 25 October 2013
How irksome in some ways for the National Theatre that both the glamour and the accessibility of cinema have bookended its first 50 years, when the company and, latterly, its Southbank home, are essentially driven by and dedicated to live... Read more... |
DVD: Much Ado About NothingTuesday, 08 October 2013
What would happen if a top Hollywood and TV director decided to take actors familiar to him to make a Shakespearean comedy? Something very interesting, especially to those enamoured of The Bard.Joss Whedon, creator of TV series like Buffy The... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opera NorthSunday, 29 September 2013
All starts with a barely perceptible bass rumble, before Britten’s lower strings begin their queasy glissandi, shifting key signature every few seconds. It’s a wonderful operatic opening, here teased out with deft mystery by conductor Stuart... Read more... |
