Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Jim Warren for the resident company at ASC, VA. 13 September, 2015. By Peter Kirwan (University of Nottingham) Although Staunton’s Blackfriars was constructed first, my experience of it comes through having seen several shows previously in the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Virginia’s theatre feels very like the Wanamaker, if the […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 6 April 2014 There was an awful moment in the closing night of the new Liverpool Everyman’s inaugural production of Twelfth Night, as Malvolio’s yellow stockings emerged, feet uppermost, through a trapdoor for an inverted prison sequence. The mechanism lifting the actor was misdirected, meaning that his […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 5 February 2012. Writing about web page https://www.cheekbyjowl.com/tis_pity_shes_a_whore.php Cheek by Jowl have revolutionised my understanding of early modern dramatists time and again – Shakespeare with itsTwelfth Night, Middleton with its The Changeling, and now John Ford with a stunning new ‘Tis Pity. This was my third production of the play following […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 5 February 2013. Long-time readers will know that my scholarly research is based primarily on the group of anonymous or misattributed plays best known collectively as ‘The Shakespeare Apocrypha’, of which Fair Em is perhaps the most obscure, to scholars as well as theatregoers. Seemingly one never to shy away […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 20 February 2013. ‘Post-modern before the term was even invented’. So runs the blurb on Shakespeare’s Globe’s ‘Read not Dead‘ webpage, and it’s a fitting description of Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle. A failure when first performed, and an often difficult play in modern revival, the Read not […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 8 August 2013. Unusually for the RSC, the poster to Sean Foley’s new production of A Mad World, My Masters (the second I’ve seen, the first professional) advertises itself prominently as ‘edited by Sean Foley and Phil Porter). This is a frustrating statement to read, partly as it implies on some level that […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 9 September 2013. Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II is an obvious companion piece to Shakespeare’sRichard II, both dealing with the deposition of a king arguably more preoccupied with his friends and sycophants than with his kingdom, and the two have been performed together frequently (including most famously with Ian McKellen […]
Review by Peter Kirwan Originally published on The Bardathon, 2 May 2010. Writing about web page https://www.solimanandperseda.com/ The Rose Theatre in Bankside is a very different enterprise to its big brother around the corner, Shakespeare’s Globe.Where the reconstructed Globe presents “living history”, a modern reimagining of a Shakespearean theatre, the exposed archaeological remains of the Rose provide a very […]
Originally published on The Bardathon, 17 December 2013. Review by Peter Kirwan Following the underwhelming and frustratingly conservative Midsummer Night’s Dream, I didn’t have high hopes for the second Shakespeare in Michael Grandage’s West End season. With promotion once again based entirely around a celebrity actor (Jude Law, returning to the director-actor partnership of Hamlet), a theatre and audience […]
Originally published on The Bardathon, 30 October 2013. As a statement of intent, Gregory Doran’s launch to his tenure as RSC Associate Director is perfectly judged. Richard II is the most ‘Doranish’ production one could imagine, from the gorgeously conceived lighting design to the sensitive treatment of male-male relationships, from the meticulous attention to detail in the tiniest roles […]
