ancient Rome
Florence Hallett
When in Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies Thomas Cromwell exclaims in exasperation, “to each monk, one bed; to each bed, one monk. Is that so hard for them?” he sums up the state of moral decay into which the monasteries had apparently lapsed by the time of their dissolution. They had, we are told, become dens of iniquity, the monks indulging in every vice and pleasure they were supposed to abstain from, and in command of such monstrous power and wealth that it is hard not to feel that maybe Henry VIII had a point.Much as we tend to think of the monasteries as essentially medieval, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Lucy Bailey’s Titus Andronicus doesn’t pull any punches (or stabbings, smotherings and throat-slittings, for that matter). Bursting into a Globe smoky with incense, with shouts and drums, forcing itself at us and on us, this is a production whose physicality is its true language. But while anyone going for the gore will get their money’s worth – the opening night added a few more to the tally of fainting audience members – they’ll also get something better: a show that’s shocking, certainly, but whose provocations are never empty.Much is made of Titus as an early play. Criticism has Read more ...
David Nice
“Aren’t you sick of Britten yet?” asked a colleague three-quarters of the way through the composer’s centenary year. Absolutely not; there have been revelations and there still remains so much to discover or re-discover. Yet re-evaluation can sour as well as sweeten; acclaimed works in the canon may turn out less good than remembered. Was it my own temporary blind spot, the problem of the piece or the musical and dramatic shortcomings so apparent in Fiona Shaw’s Glyndebourne Tour production of The Rape of Lucretia that I emerged into the crepuscular garden unmoved and a little repelled? Read more ...
Simon Munk
The greatest strategy videogames deliver a balance of time to think and pressure to act. The greatest strategy videogames deliver the thrill of battle mixed with clear strategic choice. Several entries in the Total War series count as great strategy games. But not this one. The eighth in the series fails on two distinct fronts, both in terms of execution – vital to keep its hardcore of fans engaged – and in terms of engaging content for new players.Like most of the rest of the series, Total War: Rome II has two separate but linked main modes. A gigantic Risk-style top-down map of most of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Loving the title. Caligula with Mary Beard. Professor Beard has been mentioned adjacently to some rum types of late. Internet trolls. AA Gill. They pale into nothingness, do they not, next to the emperor who mistook his horse for a consul. And his sister for a lover. You've heard the rumours. Caligula was huge in the Seventies, when such garishness blended with the wallpaper. Hence dyed blond crossdressing John Hurt being well weird in I, Claudius. Hence also Caligula's very own high-end eponymous porn movie. Those were the days. But are the stories all true?Well, maybe they are and maybe Read more ...
fisun.guner
"In the midst of life we are in death.” This is a line we may feel compelled to reverse as we encounter the first exhibits in the British Museum’s extraordinarily powerful exhibition, for this is a display vividly bringing the dead to life in the very midst of their extraordinary demise. But then, “ashes to ashes” conveys particular resonance, too, for we all know that Pompeii, a town situated in the Bay of Naples, and its lesser known, less populous neighbour Herculaneum, were both covered in a thick layer of ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79. In a single day, Read more ...
carole.woddis
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 play down our throats. The concept is impressive. The set, half Roman amphitheatre, half Nazi bunker dominated by a giant effigy, its back towards us with arm raised in totemic salute, summons up TV images of dictators who eventually come crashing down, from Stalin to Mubarak and who knows how many more to come.Though a stark warning from history Read more ...
Dylan Moore
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 site-specific offering. The team that brought Aeschylus’ The Persians to the Brecon Beacons military range have now commandeered a disused aircraft hangar a few miles outside Cardiff to stage an experimental version of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, sprinkled with Bertolt Brecht’s unfinished version Coriolan. The German’s curtailed title allows the Read more ...
Benedict Andrews
"How light power would be and easy to dismantle no doubt, if all it did was to observe, spy, detect, prohibit, and punish; but it incites, provokes, produces. It is not simply eye and ear: it makes people act and speak." Michel Foucault, PowerCaligula is a portrait of a tremendous soul in terrible crisis. In Albert Camus’s Caligula, Detlev Glanert has found a gargantuan character – a man whose dreams become his society’s nightmares. After the death of Drusilla, his sister and lover, Caligula’s world loses meaning. Life becomes absolutely unsatisfactory. In Camus’s words, "he becomes obsessed Read more ...
stephen.walsh
“The text of Britain’s teaching, the message of the free…”. No, not the Last Night of the Proms or the Olympic Games ahead of time. This is the final chorus of Elgar’s concert-length cantata Caractacus, which was given a vigorous work-out in this star concert of the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester Cathedral under Sir Andrew Davis. And before you start jeering and bringing up the problems on Britain’s streets, let me tell you that the choruses in this work are as brilliant as any in the language, and quite thrilling enough to persuade you that the message, however facile and inopportune, Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
When OperaUpClose's bar-side production of La bohème beat the ENO and Royal Opera House to the Olivier Awards' Best New Production gong earlier this year, it was hard - even in these award-sceptical parts - not to delight in the David versus Goliath-like nature of the victory. State funds and high-profile support has since beefed up this fragile dinghy of a venture. One new fan, Mark Ravenhill, was invited to direct Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea. Another, Michael Nyman, was asked to write an intervention aria. Could these artistic stars halt a recent spate of post-bohème production Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A chorus of "Hooray! No CGI!" has greeted Kevin Macdonald's new film version of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel, The Eagle of the Ninth. Not for him a Gladiator-style digital Rome, or Troy-like computer-generated navies stretching away into infinity.Laying off the gadgetry is lighter on the budget too, but Macdonald claims it was part of his plan to stick to the human scale and traditional virtues of courage and honour that drove Sutcliff's book. In fact, it's hard to see how else he could have done it, since the story boils down to two men, Roman officer Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) and Read more ...