Shakespeare
DVD: MacbethThursday, 30 June 2011
Your Macbeth opens in the round, tailored to a small studio theatre. In entrusting it to television, do you engage someone experienced in the medium to render faithfully the spaces and the talking heads, as Trevor Nunn did for the deservedly... Read more... |
Richard III, Old VicThursday, 30 June 2011
It's the hard-hitting hoedown of high summer. Old Vic supremo Kevin Spacey being reunited with director Sam Mendes for the first time since 1999's American Beauty was bound to make 'em whoop, and their new production of Richard III doesn't... Read more... |
Shakespeare Double Bill, Propeller, Hampstead TheatreSunday, 26 June 2011
As further proof that Shakespeare plays come these days not as single spies but in battalions, the London leg of the all-male Propeller ensemble's lengthy tour has pitched up in the capital in time to deliver their Richard III within days of Kevin... Read more... |
Dream againFriday, 24 June 2011
It's not often that we in the critical world revisit a production towards the end of a run to see how it's settled. I had two reasons for wanting to return to Christopher Alden's English National Opera production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's... Read more... |
Being Shakespeare, Trafalgar StudiosWednesday, 22 June 2011
There’s a lovely moment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Peter Quince assigns roles to his company of rude mechanicals. Unsatisfied with the part of the hero, Bottom interrupts, insisting he be allowed to play not only Pyramus but heroine Thisbe... Read more... |
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Theatre Royal HaymarketTuesday, 21 June 2011
Lightning hasn't quite struck twice at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, where Trevor Nunn's dazzling reclamation of early Terence Rattigan (Flare Path) has been followed by the same director's transfer from Chichester of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet, O2 ArenaFriday, 17 June 2011
The Royal Ballet says it is inviting a new audience to experience the thrill of live ballet by taking Romeo and Juliet to the gigantic O2. Beware what you wish for. It’s the thrill of the live audience I’m starting with before I get onto the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Stratford-upon-Avon: A New Stage for ShakespeareWednesday, 08 June 2011
When the Royal Shakespeare Company seemed to be falling apart in the late 1990s, there was genuine cause for concern. The troupe had no automatic monopoly over performances of Shakespeare, nor could it claim a very particular style in its stagings.... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndham's TheatreThursday, 02 June 2011
If a great whorl of bubblegum were plonked on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth all summer long, would there be any point in complaining about it? How do you criticise the uncriticisable? A new Much Ado About Nothing at Wyndham's is Shakespeare-by-... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Boyle, Martin, RachmaninovFriday, 27 May 2011
This Saturday we’ve a new recording of a famous Russian symphony played by an Italian orchestra under their London-based principal conductor. There’s a rare Shakespearean opera written in the 1950s by a Swiss master using a German text. And a... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 26 May 2011
Everybody’s talking about Much Ado About Nothing. At dinner tables, the pub and on the Bakerloo Line the only cultural conversation to be overheard having is whether David Tennant and Catherine Tate will be as wonderful as we all want them to be as... Read more... |
Macbeth, Royal OperaTuesday, 24 May 2011
The staging smacks of Covent Garden's familiar Verdi-by-numbers - surprising since it's the often inventive Phyllida Lloyd's concept, revived by Harry Fehr, but it might as well be the inert pageantry of Elijah Moshinsky - while the necessary... Read more... |
