Theatre: The Best of 2012
Thursday, 27 December 2012
For much of 2012, London theatre seemed to celebrate the playhouse as much as the play, turning certain venues into essential destinations. I'm thinking, of course, of Shakespeare's Globe, whose... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry V, Shakespeare's Globe
Friday, 15 June 2012
Henry V is a play with so many layers, and such ambivalence, that it can suit a multitude of purposes. When Laurence Olivier made his film version in 1944, it was as a propagandist rallying cry, a... Read more... |
How Globe to Globe Staged the World
Wednesday, 06 June 2012
Over the past six weeks, we at the Globe have put on a festival called Globe to Globe. The concept (an idea of Dominic Dromgoole’s) was always very simple to explain: all of Shakespeare’s plays, each... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Hamlet, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 04 June 2012
We’re fresh out of superlatives. The Globe to Globe season has put a girdle around the earth in 37 languages, and the visiting companies have now left the building. You have to high-five the Globe’s... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare's Globe
Sunday, 03 June 2012
Productions at the life-changing Globe to Globe sequence of international takes on the Bard have had numerous points of origin, from shows conceived directly for the event to reprises of stagings... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Timon of Athens, Shakespeare's Globe
Saturday, 02 June 2012
Diamonds one day, stones the next: compulsive giver Timon’s swift descent into raving misanthropy would be better packed into a gritty pop ballad than a full-length play. Still, Shakespeare just... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare’s Globe
Friday, 01 June 2012
The Comedy of Errors may not be one of Shakespeare’s most notable plays, yet this production embodied the essence of the Globe to Globe season. While the play was lent new kinds of hilarity and... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry VIII, Shakespeare's Globe
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Now here's a surprise. In English, Henry VIII gets dismissed as a Shakespearean dud (well, let's apportion the blame as well to the play's generally acknowledged co-author, John Fletcher), its karma... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Globe
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
As soon as the two leads entered you were left in no doubt that you were in the presence of stars, at least in their native Turkey: thunderous applause, cheers and whistles greeted Haluk Bilginer as... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's Globe
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
There's a good deal of irony in the most controversial production of the Globe to Globe season turning out to be one of the least interesting. The Merchant of Venice was performed by Israel's Habima... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 28 May 2012
The battle of the sexes took on a bright and breezy tone in Pakistan's contribution to the Globe's ongoing Bardathon, the Theatre Wallay-Kashf's rumbustious production of The Taming of the Shrew. It'... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's Globe
Sunday, 27 May 2012
The Winter’s Tale may not be one of the best loved of Shakespeare’s plays – not quite a comedy, not quite a full-blown drama – but the Globe was packed on the hottest night of the year for this... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: All's Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare's Globe
Friday, 25 May 2012
It's both easy and fashionable to render ironic, or scoff at, the title of All's Well That Ends Well. This is the Shakespeare "comedy" in which the rabidly obsessed Helena finally ensnares her none-... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Coriolanus, Shakespeare's Globe
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Had one listened to the Chiten company from Kyoto performing Coriolanus with one’s eyes closed, it would have seemed as if the stage were teeming with performers. And without understanding... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's Globe
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
"37 Plays. 37 Languages." This is the tagline for the Globe Theatre's Globe to Globe season, hosting theatre companies from every corner of the world. The season may be international in outlook, yet... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: As You Like It, Shakespeare's Globe
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
In the Globe to Globe season, the Caucasus is proving as fruitful a ground as any for new views on old texts. Georgia’s Marjanishvili company, under director Levan Tsuladze, proved the region has a... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 21 May 2012
The Globe to Globe season has enjoyed tremendous goodwill from audiences and critics alike. And this has been largely repaid, for it’s been a joy and a wonder to learn just how much contemporary... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: King Lear, Shakespeare's Globe
Sunday, 20 May 2012
Like a post-Soviet Oedipal X-Factor, the Belarus Free Theatre on Friday night gave one of the greatest productions of King Lear London has ever seen. Forget our local Lears, with naked theatrical... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: King John, Shakespeare's Globe
Saturday, 19 May 2012
You might have wondered if, when Armenia was offered King John as part of the Globe to Globe season, they felt they’d drawn the short straw. Not a bit of it. Shakespeare’s early history play, the... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Shakespeare's Globe
Thursday, 17 May 2012
The two parts of Henry IV parts 1 and 2 are very macho plays. Men drink, tell rude jokes, strut and lie their way into power and influence. In Globe to Globe's Latin American takes on the Bard, some... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 14 May 2012
There was always going to be one Borat moment in this festival. And it came courtesy of the Albanians, who, for comic effect, in the middle of their Henry VI, Part 2 indulged in the gratuitous... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare's Globe
Saturday, 12 May 2012
The concept sounds like something dreamed up towards the bottom of a bottle in a Harare shebeen: Two Gentlemen of Verona performed by two gentlemen in Shona. But if any of the plays can withstand the... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Macbeth, Shakespeare's Globe
Thursday, 10 May 2012
When I say this was the most punk Shakespeare I’ve ever seen, I mean it was short, loud, vulgar and showed two fingers to every single worthy but dull production you have ever snoozed through. Maja... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: The Tempest, Shakespeare's Globe
Wednesday, 09 May 2012
This music crept by me on the waters. Bangladesh’s Dhaka Theatre’s version of The Tempest took the musical route, and why not? It was always Shakespeare’s most musical play (with extant music for “... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's Globe
Tuesday, 08 May 2012
The demands of Titus Andronicus are probably at odds with the constraints of the Globe to Globe season: a travelling troupe would find it hard to get 80 gallons of fake blood through Customs. Nor are... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Othello, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 07 May 2012
The masterstroke of this take on Othello was to draw its focus away from race. It might seem odd to say that of a production in the rhyming vernacular of hip hop in which the Moor was African-... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Richard II, Shakespeare's Globe
Sunday, 06 May 2012
Mention that a Palestinian theatre company are performing Richard II and the play’s themes are immediately thrown into sharp relief: usurpation, homeland and banishment, and the idea of a... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Cymbeline, Shakespeare's Globe
Friday, 04 May 2012
This retelling of the Cymbeline story opened – or at least appeared to open – with the entire cast contributing their tuppenceworth on the issue of what the story of Cymbeline actually was. And fair... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's Globe
Thursday, 03 May 2012
There has long been a conviction in Italian drama circles that there exists a “Special Relationship” between themselves and il Bardo di Stratford: something to do with the complexities of Elizabethan... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe
Tuesday, 01 May 2012
A comedy of alienation, estrangement, and magical metamorphosis – if ever there was a Shakespeare play made for the linguistic transfigurations of the Globe to Globe season it’s A Midsummer Night’s... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe
Monday, 30 April 2012
When Zhang Dongyu’s charismatic Richard III rose from the dead to take his bows for Sunday’s spellbinding afternoon performance by the National Theatre of China, the actor paused, remaining on his... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Twelfth Night, Shakespeare's Globe
Sunday, 29 April 2012
The rain it raineth every day this week, sometimes with monsoon-like persistence. Yet there’s no dousing the ardour of groundlings and thespian visitors to the global Shakespeare village within the... Read more... |
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