RSC
Theatre Lockdown Special 2: Birthdays aplenty, songs of hope, a starry quiz - and moreThursday, 23 April 2020
As lockdown continues, so does the ability of the theatre community to find new ways to tantalise and entertain. The urge to create and perform surely isn't going to be reined-in by a virus, which explains the explosion of creatives lending their... Read more... |
Twelfth Night, RSC/Stratford-upon-Avon online review - inventive but underfeltWednesday, 15 April 2020
Twelfth Night is rarely long-absent from the British stage and nor is it in our current climate of streaming aplenty. This 2017 production for the RSC from the director Christopher Luscombe will soon be followed online by the National Theatre’s... Read more... |
A Christmas Carol, Old Vic Theatre review - the festive favourite mixes gloom with merrimentThursday, 05 December 2019
"Dickensian" commonly means both sentimental Victorian, apple-cheeked family perfection (especially at Christmas) and abject poverty. The story of Scrooge encompasses both as the old curmudgeon learns to mend his miserly ways and open his heart to... Read more... |
Measure for Measure, RSC, Barbican review - behind the timesTuesday, 19 November 2019
Because he dramatised power, Shakespeare never really goes out of fashion. Treatments of his plays do though, and the RSC’s Measure for Measure, a transfer from Stratford set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, feels distinctly slack. The backdrop is... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Barbican review - different but still problematicFriday, 08 November 2019
This is one play by Shakespeare ripe for tinkering. It's well nigh impossible now to take it at face value and still find romance and fun in the bullying: the physical and psychological abuse as a supposedly problematic wife is "tamed" into... Read more... |
As You Like It, Barbican review – uneven comedy lacks biteWednesday, 30 October 2019
Even the most ardent Bardophile has to admit that most of the time the Fool doesn’t shine in a Shakespeare production. Lamentable wordplay combined with philosophy limper than a dead capon means that with a few honourable exceptions, his interludes... Read more... |
First Person: Hannah Khalil on museum as metaphor in her new play for the RSCTuesday, 22 October 2019
It all started in 2009 in the National Portrait Gallery. I’d had a meeting nearby so popped in to get a cuppa and stare at the beautiful rooftop view of London from their top-floor café, but a picture caught my eye. It was part of an exhibition of... 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... |
Romeo and Juliet, Barbican review - plenty of action but not enough wordsWednesday, 07 November 2018
It’s clear from the start – from a Prologue that quickly dissolves familiar rhythms and words into a Babel of clamour and sound. This RSC Romeo and Juliet, newly transferred to the Barbican, isn’t much interested in what is said. Actions not words... Read more... |
Macbeth, RSC, Barbican review - Shakespeare's blood-boltered tragedy, tense but flawedWednesday, 24 October 2018
It has been said before: Macbeth's reputation for bad luck has more to do with the difficulty of bringing off a successful production than the supernatural elements in the play. Even those of us who have seen dozens of interpretations can count the... Read more... |
Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto: 'We figured Molière would have toyed with it too'Wednesday, 19 September 2018
Back in June 2017, in the days when English summertime was a lazy idyll rather than an apocalyptic inferno, RSC artistic director Greg Doran met us at his office in Stratford-upon-Avon and asked whether we wanted to write a new version of ... Read more... |
Sir Peter Hall: a day of thanksgiving and celebration for a colossus of cultureWednesday, 12 September 2018
Sir Peter Hall had no ordinary life, as might be expected from the director who more than any other defined the British theatre of the last half of the 20th century. The same can be said of the unforgettable two-part send-off he received exactly a... Read more... |
