Shakespeare
Timon of Athens, National TheatreWednesday, 18 July 2012![]() As the much-loved Arthur Marshall so profoundly noted, Ibsen is “not a fun one”. One could, with as much truth, say the same about Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens: its misanthropy, missing motivations and mercurial shifts in temper do... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2, BBC TwoSunday, 15 July 2012![]() One intends no discredit to the keenly judged monarch-to-be that is Tom Hiddleston's Prince Hal, who will reappear on the small screen next weekend carrying the story forward in Henry V, to point out that Richard Eyre's terrific BBC adaptation... Read more... |
Otello, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 13 July 2012![]() Pardon the anomaly of a lightly browned-up Latvian Moor married to a German-Greek beauty. This, after all, is not Shakespeare’s play but Verdi’s opera, for which all too few are born to sing heroic tenor Otello and lyric-dramatic soprano Desdemona.... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1, BBC TwoSunday, 08 July 2012![]() Now we're talking! Following on from a small-screen Richard II of greater aural than visual interest, along comes Richard Eyre's TV adaptation of both Henry IV plays, and the first thing that seems evident about Part One is how well it would... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 05 July 2012![]() The Taming of the Shrew celebrates its own rumbustious, raucous (mis)behaviour, so why shouldn't Shakespeare's comedy be granted a production that follows suit? From an opening gambit involving bodily fluids sprayed in the direction of the... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Richard II, BBC TwoSunday, 01 July 2012![]() There was some pretty serious hair on view in the BBC's new film of Richard II, a play better-known for its luxuriant verse, and well there might be, given that the adaptation came to us courtesy that most fulsomely-maned of theatre directors,... Read more... |
The Grand Tour/ Faster/ The Dream, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 28 June 2012![]() Cafés, ballets, it’s all the same to the mighty petty bullyboys of the London Olympics, who have not only devised two of the most revolting mascots in Olympic history (the one-eyed slugs Wenlock and Mandeville) but also employed teams of... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, BBC Four/Match of the Day Live, BBC OneMonday, 25 June 2012![]() “Let slip the dogs of war.” Somewhere in the bowels of Kiev’s Olympic Stadium, a football coach will have said something along these lines around the half seven mark. Meanwhile, over on the clever-clever channel, an alternative meeting between... Read more... |
Simon Schama's Shakespeare, BBC TwoSaturday, 23 June 2012![]() With every new series, as he edges closer and closer to Dimbleby-ian National Treasure status, Simon Schama’s archly mannered drawl becomes more and more pronounced, his camp asides more central to his on screen persona. He is getting awful grand.... Read more... |
Joely Richardson on Shakespeare's Women, BBC FourWednesday, 20 June 2012![]() Who better, you might think, than Joely Richardson, a member of the Redgrave acting dynasty, to front a programme about Shakespeare? He runs deep in the Redgrave-Richardson DNA, she told us, sitting in the Old Vic Theatre where her mother Vanessa... Read more... |
Twelfth Night/The Tempest, RSC, RoundhouseFriday, 15 June 2012![]() The RSC’s Twelfth Night dumps its audience unceremoniously onto the shores of Ilyria in the thump and beat of waves. While Viola struggles from the (very deep and very real) water, asking “What country friends is this?”, we by contrast find... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry V, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 15 June 2012![]() Henry V is a play with so many layers, and such ambivalence, that it can suit a multitude of purposes. When Laurence Olivier made his film version in 1944, it was as a propagandist rallying cry, a reminder of what was at stake in a war that was far... Read more... |
