Shakespeare
Twelfth Night/Richard III, Apollo TheatreMonday, 19 November 2012
Something new is happening in the West End. Just up the road from Thriller and down a bit from Les Misérables a billboard the colour of weak tea (positively consumptive compared to the full-colour, neon assaults on either side) proclaims the arrival... Read more... |
Red Velvet, Tricycle TheatreWednesday, 17 October 2012
Wow, what a lot of debuts. Adrian Lester (Hustle, Bonekickers, Merlin) makes his Tricycle Theatre debut in this new play about a black actor in Regency London, and it’s written by his wife, the actress Lolita Chakrabarti. The play is her first... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Noël Coward TheatreFriday, 28 September 2012
Never quite at the top of the Shakespearean canon, Much Ado About Nothing now seems more vital and adaptable than ever – and vastly darker than, say, Kenneth Branagh’s sun-kissed screen romp acknowledged back in 1993. The cult director Joss Whedon... Read more... |
What You Will, Apollo TheatreWednesday, 19 September 2012
As long as Simon Callow is around, London’s theatre scene will never be short of one-man shows, nor of Shakespeare. A new pretender to the Shakespearian throne, a rival for the hollow crown (and, just occasionally, the hollow laugh) has however... Read more... |
Wild Oats, Bristol Old VicFriday, 14 September 2012
John O’Keeffe’s 18th century classic Wild Oats is a play about players and an uproarious love letter to the theatre: a perfect fit for the re-opening, after 18 months of massive refurbishment, of Bristol’s Old Vic, originally constructed in 1766 and... Read more... |
King Lear, Almeida TheatreWednesday, 12 September 2012
He arrives in a blaze of light and trumpets, but Jonathan Pryce’s King Lear seems as much charming, lovable father as imposing monarch as he sets about carving up his kingdom. What follows, though, brings a prickling sense of horror, as Michael... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, Noël Coward TheatreThursday, 16 August 2012
It’s brave to take Shakespeare into the West End in midsummer – and in this of all summers. Greg Doran’s all-black, African Caesar certainly doesn’t lack for impact, colour, zest, urgency. It takes the audience by the scruff of the neck and rams the... Read more... |
Coriolan/us, National Theatre Wales/RSCFriday, 10 August 2012
National Theatre Wales like the word “us”. It was there in Michael Sheen’s Passion of Port Talbot – its film adaptation was called The Gospel of Us – and it is here, prominently, in the multi-layered title of Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes’ latest... Read more... |
Richard III, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 26 July 2012
“Would you enforce me to a world of cares?” croons Rylance’s Richard III, lingering tremulously over his question, the picture of world-sick piety and reluctance. As the groundlings cheer an ecstatic affirmative, Shakespeare’s most compelling... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Henry V, BBC TwoSunday, 22 July 2012
Forget the ages-old talk of London buses arranging their schedules so that they all arrive at once. The capital's patterns of public transport have nothing on the rapidity with which Henry V has hoved into view of late, whether at Shakespeare's... Read more... |
Shakespeare: Staging the World, British MuseumSaturday, 21 July 2012
Where on earth do you begin if all the world’s a stage? When not sifting through the entrails of dynastic English history or sunning themselves in Italy, the plays of Shakespeare really do put a girdle round the known globe. They send postcards from... Read more... |
Desdemona, Barbican HallSaturday, 21 July 2012
Peter Sellars has a talent for controversy, from his early days when he was the director who brought you Così fan tutte set in a diner on Cape Cod, Don Giovanni as a cocaine-snorting, Big Mac-eating slum thug, and Figaro getting married in Trump... Read more... |
