Theatre Features
Priestley in the House: Cornelius RevivedWednesday, 15 August 2012
I am keenly looking forward to seeing the new production of JB Priestley’s play Cornelius at the Finborough Theatre. This will be the first time I have seen the work performed, though I have of course read it. But my father always said his plays were made for the stage rather than the page. They need the skill of a cast and director to bring the characters alive and the active engagement of the audience to enhance the experience. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Avignon FestivalMonday, 30 July 2012
The vast Avignon Festival is not a neatly curated sequence of works which can be experienced - like certain art biennales or the Proms - as if on a conveyor belt. There are 50 productions in the official “In” during three weeks, and more than a thousand shows - mostly dross - in the “Off” fringe. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Buxton: G&S live on (and on)Sunday, 22 July 2012
Within hours of the opera buffs leaving town, having had their fill of Buxton Festivalia, the old spa changes gear for operetta. For three weeks, the town becomes the jolly international capital for Gilbert & Sullivan. Enthusiasts and performers from all over the country and foreign parts gather to celebrate the seemingly never-ending attraction of those old familiar tunes, characters and satirical send-ups. Read more... |
I, Cinna: The Streaming of Shakespeare's BardTuesday, 12 June 2012
It has been nearly 10 years since I started writing for theatre. The second thing I wrote was a commission for the Brighton Festival who offered me the opportunity to make and perform a piece for young audiences inspired by a Shakespeare play. That was I, Caliban – a separate production of which is currently touring with Bristol Old Vic/Company of Angels alongside their version of I, Peaseblossom, the second of my Brighton commissions. Read more... |
How Globe to Globe Staged the WorldWednesday, 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 in a different language. But the reality of that, of course, was unprecedented, unwieldy and just plain large. Read more... |
The Glastonbury of the Mind: Hay turns 25Thursday, 31 May 2012
Apart from “I did not have sex with that woman” and maybe “It’s the economy, stupid”, Bill Clinton seems never to have said anything quite as memorable. Indeed, of all the phrases with his name attached, none is quoted quite so tremulously as Clinton's description of an event that takes place annually on the border between England and Wales as May makes way for June. Read more... |
Volcano: Noël Coward's Caribbean PlayTuesday, 29 May 2012
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. Read more... |
Brighton Festival 2012: Waterlitz, Stuffing Peter Rabbit, War Sum UpSunday, 27 May 2012
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. Read more... |
On reinventing ClytemnestraSunday, 15 April 2012
Like many students, I read the Oresteia by Aeschylus as an undergraduate as part of a compulsory Tragedy paper. A while ago I was asked would I do a new version of the Oresteia. I’m not a Greek scholar so I feel I have no authority to offer a "translation". However, I was up for writing a completely new play. Read more... |
theASHtray: Klinghoffer, Cape Town, and Debussy pisses off the poetsSaturday, 03 March 2012
Who does the PR these days for Middle Eastern extremists? Whoever it is clearly wasn’t on board when the Palestine Liberation Front decided to whack the Achille Lauro. Or wasn’t aware that chucking a wheelchair-bound pensioner into the Med was the sort of move unlikely to garner widespread international support for the cause. Read more... |
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The Observer, Kate Kellaway
Direct from a sold-out season at Kiln Theatre the five star, hit play, The Son, is now playing at the Duke of York’s Theatre for a strictly limited season.
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Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller (The Father, The Mother), lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst.
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