Shakespeare
Falstaff, The Grange Festival review - belly laughs and bags of funSaturday, 08 June 2019
What is the perfect country house opera? A Midsummer Night’s Dream? L’elisir? Cenerentola? Figaro? All are strong contenders, but in the absence of anyone brave enough to stage Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest the winner – surely –... Read more... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's Globe review - a gallimaufry of acting stylesWednesday, 29 May 2019
Need Shakespeare 's Falstaff charm to be funny? Those warm, indulgent feelings won by Mrisho Mpoto in the amazing Globe to Globe's Swahili Merry Wives and by Christopher Benjamin in a period-pretty version are rarely encouraged by this season's... Read more... |
Henry IV Parts 1 & 2/Henry V, Shakespeare's Globe review - helter-skelter ensemble history trilogyThursday, 16 May 2019
Henry IV Part One (***)Women as Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff? It's been done before, and superlatively well, in Phyllida Lloyd's Shakespeare-in-prison trilogy (Henry IV Part One, with several crucial scenes from Part Two, between Julius Caesar and The... Read more... |
Ali Smith: Spring review – green shoots, dark fearsSunday, 31 March 2019
Stopped in the street for a vox pop by a BBC interviewer keen to “fill your air” with strife and bile, a character in Spring retorts that “there’s a world out there bigger than Brexit, yeah?” Newshound critics, take note. The symbolically named Brit... Read more... |
Elizabeth I/Macbeth, English Touring Opera review - elegance and eerinessTuesday, 26 March 2019
A crash, a scurry, a long, lilting serenade – the overture to Rossini’s Elizabeth I sounds oddly familiar. Not to worry. English Touring Opera has anticipated our confusion. “You may recognise this overture” flash the surtitles, to a ripple of... Read more... |
Richard II, Sam Wanamaker Theatre review - electrifying mixed-race all-female productionMonday, 18 March 2019
Richard II has become the drama of our times, as it walks us through the impotent convulsions of a weak and vain leader brought down by in-fighting among his men. While the Almeida’s recent production starred Simon Russell Beale as a solipsistic... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Guildhall School review - earthy, energetic BrittenMonday, 04 March 2019
It speaks vivid volumes for the superb health of our music colleges that the Guildhall School tackles every aspect of Britten's long and layered Shakespeare adaptation with total confidence. On Friday night, there wasn't a weak expressive link... Read more... |
All Is True review - all's well doesn't end well in limp Shakespeare biopicSaturday, 09 February 2019
All may be true but not much is of interest in this Kenneth Branagh-directed film that casts an actor long-steeped in the Bard as a gardening-minded Shakespeare glimpsed in (lushly filmed) retirement. Seemingly conceived in order to persuade... Read more... |
The Tragedy of King Richard II, Almeida Theatre review - Simon Russell Beale leads revelatory interpretationWednesday, 19 December 2018
Joe Hill-Gibbins’ uncompromising production of The Tragedy of Richard II hurtles through Shakespeare’s original text, stripping and flaying it so it is revealed in a new shuddering light. Narcissistic, petulant and indecisive, Simon Russell Beale’s... Read more... |
The Merry Wives of Windsor, RSC, Barbican review - panto ShakespeareThursday, 13 December 2018
For those of us who have never thought much before about links between pantomime and Shakespeare, Fiona Laird’s new Merry Wives offers a chance to see how the combination works. Making short shrift of tradition, her version of the Falstaff comedy... Read more... |
Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe review - sexually-charged production draws power from the shadowsThursday, 15 November 2018
Macbeth has rarely seemed quite as metrosexual as in this gorgeous shadow-painted production that marks Globe artistic director Michelle Terry’s first production in the Sam Wanamaker theatre. Even in a play that walks the tightrope between its... Read more... |
Robert Hastie: 'a seam of love runs through the play' - interviewMonday, 12 November 2018
Robert Hastie is a little late for our meeting. Directing Shakespeare's darkest tragedy in London while also running Sheffield Theatres must sometimes cause a logjam of simultaneous demands, but whatever the morning's problem in the north of England... Read more... |
