Roundhouse
alexandra.coghlan
Problematic in performance in a way that the “problem plays” simply aren’t, Shakespeare’s Roman plays remain some of his hardest to stage satisfactorily. Updated versions too often turn into Magritte-esque fantasies of identikit, suited politicos, while the togas of more traditional approaches can feel absurd, unavoidably laden with satiric or Hollywood associations. Courting rather than rejecting evocations of the latter, Lucy Bailey’s 2009 Julius Caesar for the RSC brings cinematic scope and contemporary gore to its treachery, demanding that its audience lend not only ears, but eyes, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates its 50th birthday season with the grand reopening of its transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre at a cost of £112.8 million. The temporary Courtyard Theatre folds curtains on the sold-out smash hit that is Matilda, awaiting one last flourish in the Olympics Shakespeare Festival next year before its intended demolition. New productions of Macbeth, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet inaugurate the revamped RST, while London operations transfer from the Roundhouse to Hampstead Theatre for the premieres of three new plays. The season is capped with a six-week Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
A night when a fresh fall of snow was fluttering from the heavens could hardly have felt more fitting for the opening of this Shakespearean romance – particularly since David Farr’s production for the RSC, first seen in Stratford in 2009, so felicitously counters fire with ice. Cruelty and rage, the willful closing off of the heart, the reawakening of hope and the resurrection of enduring love: passion both kills and sustains in the worlds of Sicilia and Bohemia; and if the staging sometimes seems slightly ponderous, it delivers moments of arresting intensity.Sicilia, under the chilly rule of Read more ...
David Nice
For quirky authority in Shakespeare, Kathryn Hunter is surely up there with Mark Rylance. Her production of Pericles was one of the two best things I’ve seen at the Globe – Rylance in Twelfth Night being the other - her characterisations of Lear and Richard III as compelling as any. Hunter plays Cleopatra as a regal, shrewd eastern cousin of Katherina and Beatrice, making the case for a very human prose which would no doubt work better if the production around which she snakes and sharptongues found a little more poetry in other quarters.The virtues of this latest transfer from Stratford are Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Can you go home again? That's the question that will be hanging over the Royal Shakespeare Company's first residency at the Roundhouse since their "History Play" cycle stormed north London over two years ago, reminding those lucky enough to catch it of the loss to the capital ever since the RSC opted out of a London base of operations. Now that they have one - this current 10-week season of eight plays initials an ongoing collaboration with the Camden Town venue - the more pressing interest pertains to the work, especially given the frequency with which the Donmar and National (not to mention Read more ...
david.cheal
At 7.55pm I was tired and grouchy. By 9.30pm I was a happy man, thanks to Neil Diamond. Say what you like about this 69-year-old singer and songwriter: he may be a cheesy old showbiz pro, but personally I am partial to a bit of cheesy showbiz, and an hour and a half in his company on the final night of this year’s Radio 2 Electric Proms was a real tonic.With his Thunderbirds eyebrows and his prowling gait, Diamond was an imposing figure whose voice has lost none of its gritty rasp, a quality that lends his songs emotional authenticity. And his rapport with the audience was immaculate – lots Read more ...
Ismene Brown
With five first-magnitude stars in it you're expecting at least a five-star show from Eonnagata, the collaboration between ballerina Sylvie Guillem, theatre director Robert Lepage, choreographer Russell Maliphant, designer Alexander McQueen and lighting genius Michael Hulls - possibly even the Milky Way. But I can't divvy up more than two stars for the result. There is too much courteous mutual admiration going on to allow light to shine as theatre, with the exception of some of the last minutes of the 90, which are blindingly good and left me gnashing my teeth at what could have been Read more ...