Shakespeare
Marianka Swain
Trouble remembering in which country Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers cross paths? Branagh’s panting paean to Fellini will sort you out. Stylish as a monochromatic Vogue spread, and as self-consciously Italian as Bruno Tonioli guzzling lasagne in a gondola, it’s not exactly a triumph of cultural nuance. Capulet is a sharp-suited mafia don who makes an affected entrance sipping espresso, the Prince is a fascist enforcer, al-fresco dining is interrupted by fiery gesticulation, and every loss is met with operatic wailing.In this context, the high-speed courtship and resulting fallout seem Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, was born to play the blasted, blighted Richard III, as one might expect from an actor whose long-term apprenticeship to both classical theatre and television converged to bring the BBC's Hollow Crown series to a surpassingly bleak if potent finish.Those who associate Shakespeare's "bottled spider" with various excuses through the years for overindulgence and/or camp got instead a portrait of gathering psychosis that was considerably more biting and bitter than has generally been true of this play of late. Along the way, its visual command confirmed director Read more ...
Ismene Brown
According to Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That, the true Bible of English history, King John was a Bad (to be exact, an Awful) King. Shakespeare had quite an interest in Bad Kings – Richards II and III were also subjected to his selective dramatist’s forensics, and like Sellar and Yeatman he only remembered the bits he wanted to remember, and then partially. Hence no Magna Carta in King John, no losing of the Crown Jewels in the Wash, and the monarch dies at operatic length of poisoning, rather than the unglamorous realities of dysentery.The play, which the Bard left Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mozart: Serenade in B flat major, 'Gran Partita', Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble/Trevor Pinnock (Linn)Mozart's Gran Partita is a multi-movement work longer than many romantic symphonies, hardly what we'd expect from a serenade. It's miraculous stuff, of course, a sublime blend of earthy charm and sensuality. The best performances know when to keep their feet securely on the ground, and this one is among them. Many readings employ a double bassist, but Trevor Pinnock uses a contrabassoon, arguing that Mozart would have preferred one had 18th-century contrabassonists been up to the Read more ...
Matthew Romain
A few days after two Taliban rockets had quivered in the Afghan skies above us, I found myself looking up at an altogether different set of heavens in the Sistine Chapel. Moments of reflection on this tour were, out of necessity, brief; our schedule, out of necessity, hectic. Contrasts were commonplace. Vatican City was our 191st country, and our two-year tour to play Hamlet to every nation in the world was rolling rapidly to its conclusion.A friendly priest who'd enjoyed our performance the night before had been showing us round, jumping queues and hopping barriers and peeking into closed- Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Parodic ignoramus Philomena Cunk has been flaunting her narrow cultural horizons on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe for many years, and more recently extended her shallow range to such weighty issues as feminism and the financial crisis in her Moments of Wonder series. Shakespeare, though? There is plenty of opportunity to be dumb, but could it still be funny? Actually, it was a delight.Cunk’s stock-in-trade, the faux-naif misunderstanding, delivered completely deadpan, worked a treat, but that’s only the start of her comic journey. The best lines emerged in a baroque concatenation of idiocy, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Time was when the words “a new sitcom from Ben Elton” wouldn't make anyone's heart quicken with anticipation. I think it's fair to say that after the glorious Blackadder (1983-89), he struggled to write anything so brilliantly, giddily funny, but with Upstart Crow he has made a storming return to form.David Mitchell is William Shakespeare, here played as a man for whom one word will never do when he can say ten, and always on the verge of a moan – whether it's about the poor 16th-century transport system between London and Stratford-upon-Avon, or the fact that, as a Midlander, he's seen as an Read more ...
bella.todd
Of all the 400th anniversary tributes to Shakespeare, this ramble through an allotment just outside Brighton has to be one of the oddest, and most unexpectedly moving. Brighton Festival has a reputation for site-specific work, rediscovering secret pockets of the city and surroundings. This year it’s the turn of Roedale Allotments, a sprawling site of 200-plus plots hidden within a tree-lined valley. It’s a ramshackle rural idyll with a distant twinkle of the sea.Artist Marc Rees stumbled upon this “horticultural, higgledy-piggledy metropolis” a couple of years ago. He had been looking for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Allegedly one of the worst plays Shakespeare wrote (which he may have done in cahoots with Thomas Nashe), the first part of Henry VI emerged victorious from this TV adaptation. Whereas one might think twice about chopping and rejigging Hamlet or King Lear, director and co-adapter Dominic Cooke had applied some muscular compressing and reshaping which meant that the piece gathered pace steadily, and was thundering ahead at full steam by the time it hit the final credits.Mind you, it wasn't strictly Henry VI Part 1, since some of the later scenes (most notably the harrowing denunciation and Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In his last minutes as the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole took to the stage to reflect on his years at the helm. Behind him was the cast of Hamlet, home after two years on the road playing to audiences from every country on the planet. He acknowledged his predecessor Mark Rylance, who waved a hat from the throng of groundlings, and then pointed up to the circle where his successor Emma Rice was greeted with gales of welcoming applause.Rice has made clear her intention to stir things up. Her opening production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream recasts Helena as Helenus Read more ...
Marianka Swain
In this 400th anniversary year, amid what feels like 400 million shows and tributes, it’s increasingly difficult for a Shakespeare production to stand out. No such problem for Emma Rice’s opening salvo, which responds to those critical of her appointment in resolute fashion. Never thought you’d see fireman’s poles, amplification, Indian sitar and disco lights at the Globe? Think again.Rice’s Dream honours the spirit of the building without feeling bound by its period-perfect architecture. Rather than Athens, we are in the here and now, with Hippolyta a leopard print-clad Russian bride, Read more ...
David Nice
You rarely see a full production of Shakespeare's dream play so magical it brings tears to the eyes. But then you don't often get 42 players and 14 voices joining the cast to adorn the text with Mendelssohn's bewitching incidental music, plus the Overture composed 16 years earlier – certainly the most perfect masterpiece ever written by a 17-year-old. Add a fluent ensemble of actors, a sense of high style in costume design and, above a simple stage with audience on three sides and the orchestra on the fourth, a hammerbeam oak forest in the very hall where Twelfth Night had its first known Read more ...