RSC
Richard II, BarbicanFriday, 13 December 2013
Richard II arrives in London after a highly successful Stratford run and while the glow of David Tennant’s Hamlet resides still in the memory. Surprisingly, the pleasure of the production lies not so much in dazzle as solidity. This doesn’t give a... Read more... |
Ayahs, lascars and munshis: staging The EmpressWednesday, 17 April 2013
It was over four years ago that I was commissioned by Michael Boyd, then artistic director of the RSC, to write a play which I had vaguely pitched to him as “a costume drama set in the nineteenth century with Asians running around in it”. And... Read more... |
The Mouse and His Child: Redemption, salvation and transformationFriday, 23 November 2012
I read and loved The Mouse and His Child as a child. Apparently. I was reminded of this by the inscription in the copy I gave to my god-daughter 15 years ago. And again, when I read it to my own daughter 10 years later. It’s such an extraordinarily... 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... |
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... |
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... |
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... |
Written on the Heart, Duchess TheatreTuesday, 24 April 2012
Unlike the National, the RSC has not had a good record of producing exciting new plays in the past 20 years or so. But one exception to this rule is the theatre’s support for the work of David Edgar, whose masterpiece Pentecost was put on by them in... Read more... |
2012 Olivier Awards: comedy sidelined as Matilda enters the record booksMonday, 16 April 2012
Matilda, the Royal Shakespeare Company-spawned musical about an extraordinary young girl, managed the extraordinary feat Sunday of snaring a record seven trophies at last night’s 36th Laurence Olivier Awards. Its rampaging hold over the black-tie... Read more... |
RSC directorship goes to odds-on favouriteThursday, 22 March 2012
Gregory Doran was today named the incoming artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he will succeed Michael Boyd in the post later this year. The announcement came as no surprise given Doran's longstanding commitment to an... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Barrie RutterSunday, 29 January 2012
In 1992 Northern Broadsides, the Halifax-based theatre company founded by Barrie Rutter, staged its first production, Richard III. Rutter (b 1946), an established actor who had worked with some of the most distinguished names in theatre such as... Read more... |
Actress Lisa Dillon on taming the ShrewTuesday, 24 January 2012
I have never seen another Kate so I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about the role. I was incredibly excited to play this woman in a play which is regarded as so heavily misogynistic and very much a battle of the sexes - to make this Kate very... Read more... |
