Theatre
Matt Wolf
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 not exactly enhanced by one's awareness that this was the play that was being performed when the original Globe burned down in June, 1613. Happily, the only fire in evidence in the Globe to Globe's contribution from Spain was that communicated by its brio-filled, impassioned cast, for whom a potential theatrical pageant fairly pulsated with life. The revelatory nature of the Madrid-based Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Although some contemporary plays — notably Posh and 13 — have accurately taken the temperature of the times, what about the timeless classics? Does Sophocles’s Antigone (dated about 441BC) have anything to say to us today? How can it be of our time too? As the National Theatre wheels out this play, with a cast led by Christopher Eccleston and Jodie Whittaker, onto its main stage, such questions hang in the air like the smoke from an ancient funeral pyre.The third of the Theban plays, Antigone is a perfect tragedy: everyone behaves in the right way, but with fatal results. It's a true tragedy Read more ...
fisun.guner
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 Antony and Zerrin Tekindor as Cleopatra, as they stepped nimbly onto the stage to perform a coquettish little game of chase, thus setting the playful tone of this most seductive of Shakespearean tragedies.Bilginer, husky-voiced and grizzly-bearded, has many major stage and film roles under his belt in Turkey (in Hollywood, too, since he also starred alongside Clive Owen and Naomi Watts in the 2009 Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Co-directors Rupert Goold and Michael Fentiman have not taken an easy option here. Given the wintry setting and the cameo from Father Christmas, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe would have made a great posh panto in December. Instead this ambitious attempt at event theatre has opened in May, with London gently grilling in a heatwave. Luckily Threesixty Theatre's state-of-the-art circus-style tent stayed airily cool, although the production was a little tepid at times.Every well-read fantasy fan must surely know the CS Lewis tale of the four frightfully English Pevensie siblings, (pictured Read more ...
josh.spero
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 National Theatre, a company which has incurred the wrath of some for performing in the Occupied Territories, and there were protestors tonight, mainly of the flag-waving variety. The drama in the yard and the galleries was not matched on stage, I can unhappily report.Played as a straight period piece, with velvet and doublets and ruffles for miles, this Merchant gave us a rather listless Read more ...
Philip Hoare
Volcano was written in 1956 when Noël Coward was suffering the dubious status of having become Britain’s first celebrity tax exile. The play – unperformed in his lifetime - is the product of his laidback life in Jamaica, and of a period during which he was regarded as a crumbling colonial relic outmoded by a post-war Labour government and the rowdy commotions of the Angry Young Men back home.Coward’s reputation had taken a battering in the post-war years. The British public were no longer satisfied with reruns of Brief Encounter, and critics such as Beverley Baxter posed the question, " Read more ...
Matt Wolf
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's been more customary of late to treat this most vexatious of comedies as sustainedly ironic or as a far-from-funny exercise in domestic degradation. But the director Hassaim Hussain and his agile company were having none of that. If anything their production in its tone often suggested a dry run for The Comedy of Errors, which the Globe will host later this week.Ed Hall and his all-male Propeller Read more ...
james.woodall
Peter Brook is probably at his happiest in Africa. Through his Paris theatre, the Bouffes du Nord, he has long had access to gifted Francophone black African actors. They’ve always been a significant contingent of his troupe there, which has also included Maghrebis, Americans, Japanese, Germans, French and even, sometimes, Britons. Brook’s first focus of attention was West Africa, then South: in 1973 he was blown away at the Royal Court by township actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and set out on a project to inhabit and stage the black African soul which has lasted four decades.In this Read more ...
bella.todd
As finales go, you can’t get much better than a pterodactyl flying from the torso of an iron giant and wheeling out over Brighton beach. Last night, as the 2012 Brighton Festival prepared to move into its final day, thousands gathered near the seafront for Waterlitz, the latest free, camera-phone defying outdoor spectacle from bonkers French company Générik Vapeur. A 30-ton figure made from eight metal shipping containers, the structure could apparently be seen from neighbouring Rottingdean, looking like a cross between the Wicker Man and the Angel of the North.It turned out to be more of a Read more ...