Shakespeare
Emma Dibdin
Few heroes of cult genre television ever manage the transition into mainstream financial success – although JJ Abrams hasn't been doing too badly for himself – and for many years Joss Whedon's deified status among fans of his various lovingly crafted, emotionally rich series was not reflected by broader recognition. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its spin-off series Angel, and space-western Firefly have all maintained a passionately devoted core of fans, despite all having been off the air for almost a decade, and it was largely thanks to fan campaigning that Whedon made his feature Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Midsummer’s Eve may still be a month away and the evenings more bracing than balmy, but despite a serious chill still in the air the Globe Theatre yesterday proved yet again that it exists in its own microclimate. It’s a theatre and a company made for comedy. Such is the laughter, the sense of occasion, the energy of the crowd, that you find yourself swept up in the joy of it all – enjoying a summer holiday, if only for the evening.Dominic Dromgoole’s new A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers no interruption to the Globe’s sequence of hit comedies. Who couldn’t love a production that comes with Read more ...
David Nice
There are Handel operas where you wait impatiently for the handful of truly original set-pieces to light up the action, hoping the singers are equal to their challenges. One such is surely Siroe, Re di Persia, bravely staged at the Göttingen Handel Festival the other week. Others like Imeneo sparkle with genius and personality in virtually every number, musically if not dramatically the equal of a Shakespeare late romance.It’s a pleasure to sit through a reasonably animated concert performance like this, cast regardless, when the strings of an unshowy orchestra dart like little cupids around Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
In this revival of Richard Jones's 2009 production, the action has been very effectively shifted to post-war Windsor with Sir John Falstaff (Laurent Naouri) as down-at-heel gentry maintaining delusions of superiority, rubbing up against an ascendant middle class. Nannetta and Fenton are presumably about to play their part in the baby boom. Period features abound, from chintz and mock Tudor to soda siphons, troupes of Brownies and a Victrola cabinet.There are witty little touches, which add to the visual appeal of the production, such as the presence of a (not terribly realistic) cat in every Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A thunder sheet booms, a didgeridoo hums distantly, a model ship rears and pitches its way forward through the waves of groundlings and suddenly we find ourselves washed up on the shores of the Globe for another season. All eyes may be on the newly launched Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, but just when we were all at risk of getting too distracted by its novelty, Jeremy Herrin and his new production of The Tempest are here to remind us what the original Globe Theatre does best.We’ve not been short on Tempests in London of late, but if there is any space and company that should be able to make sense Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
It’s apt that a drama set among soldiers should be presented with military precision; but corruption, cruelty and perversion can lurk amid the human innards of the machine of war, and in Nicholas Hytner’s well-oiled, impeccably paced production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, the chainlink and concrete of an army base house scenes of cruel humiliation.Hytner's inaugural 2003 season as artistic director of the National included his staging of Henry V, coinciding with the Iraq War and starring Adrian Lester. Now Lester takes on the titular Moor, opposite Rory Kinnear, whom Hytner directed as Hamlet Read more ...
Mark Kidel
In spite of a text that feels at times like Shakespeare by numbers, Andrew Hilton’s tightly-knit company has once again pulled off an evening of captivating theatre. As in other productions from Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, the casting is pitch-perfect and the acting first class, down to the star performance of a hilariously mournful black dog.Two Gentlemen of Verona is an early piece, and although there are plenty of the touches of the genius that will illuminate the bard’s greatest plays, this tale of love, friendship, inconstancy and betrayal is almost too smoothly constructed. The Read more ...
carole.woddis
"And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind." So speaks King Lear towards the end of his monumental journey of self-knowledge that has taken the mad monarch from the highest to the lowest reaches of human experience.Unsurprisingly, it was an ambition long held and within the grasp of the actor Edward Petherbridge to play Lear, widely regarded as the summit of a classical thespian's career, when, in New Zealand to take on the part in 2007, he was struck down by not one but two strokes.The miracle is that he is here to tell the tale and, what’s more, to devise - at 76, as he keeps Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There has always been a keen air of propulsion to the career of James McAvoy. He made his name on television in State of Play and Shameless, while early film roles in Starter for 10 and Inside I’m Dancing swiftly promoted him up the leading man’s ladder to appear in The Last King of Scotland, Atonement, The Last Station, X-Men: First Class and, as of this month, Welcome to the Punch.Equally comfortable playing romantic leads and action heroes, he has never been quite a force in theatre. This is partly a matter of choice. He has prioritised screen roles over stage opportunities. The last time Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The thing about puppets, as those who have handled them know all too well, is that they take over. They have a life of their own. This is all fine and good as long as the puppet-masters don’t get swamped by the magical power of supposedly inanimate objects.Much of the fun and originality of Tom Morris’s restlessly inventive take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, made in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company - his co-directors for War Horse - derives from the playfulness that toys encourage in us all. But the astounding array of mechanical inventions, from the simple miniature Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, set in an Italian prison, performed by criminals? If it sounds like a gimmick, the Taviani brothers’ Caesar Must Die is anything but. Following a popular tradition of freshening up Shakespeare's works with a shift in setting or location (think 10 Things I Hate About You or Ran), the Tavianis' deft editing creates a lean and intriguing 76 minutes that outstrips three hour epics in meaning and depth.Now in their eighties, the brothers are no strangers to effective cinema, with Padre, Padrone and Night of the Shooting Stars hallmarks of their time. Discovering Julius Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The last time James McAvoy played the Scottish king, it was in a scintillating reworking of the play written in the modern idiom by Peter Moffat, for the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told season in 2005. McAvoy was Joe Macbeth, a Glasgow chef passionate about his work, the restaurant kitchen where he worked a fitting place for the play's blood and gore.Jamie Lloyd's production is equally thrilling and radical, and is set 50 years hence in a (possibly) post-independence Scotland, brutalised by war and, we may assume from the programme notes, ravaged by the effects of climate change. Soutra Gilmour's Read more ...