The Alchemist, directed by Paul Burbridge for Riding Lights Company at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 22 February 2014 Review by Eoin Price A version of this review was first published on asidenotes.wordpress.com on 23 February 2014. Paul Burbridge relocated his Belgrade Theatre production of Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist to Coventry, trading Jacobean London references for […]
Directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, 19 November 2014 Reviewed by Eva Griffith According to Martin White’s programme notes for Greg Doran’s 2014 production of The Witch of Edmonton,the original performances of this fact-based tragedy were presented at the Cockpit-Phoenix near Drury Lane in 1621. The […]
A Woman Killed with Kindness by Thomas Heywood. Directed by Eleanor Sax for Theatron Novum at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford Playhouse, 25 October 2016 Reviewed by Peter Malin References to the play are to “A Woman Killed with Kindness” and Other Domestic Plays, ed. by Martin Wiggins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). This […]
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 […]
Volpone at the Royal Shakespeare Company (https://www.rsc.org.uk) Swan Theater, Stratford-upon-Avon, 17 July 2015. Reviewed by Joseph F. Stephenson Sir Trevor Nunn’s assignment for his return engagement with the Royal Shakespeare Company turned out to be Ben Jonson’s tricky 1606 play Volpone. The resulting concoction—a modernistic production set in present-day London rather than seventeenth-century Venice—leaves the […]
Edward II by Christopher Marlowe. Directed by Charlotte Vickers for Oxford University Dramatic Society et al., Oxford Playhouse, 28 January 2017. Reviewed by Peter Malin References to the play are to Christopher Marlowe, Edward the Second, ed. by Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey, New Mermaids, 2nd edn (London: A. & C. Black, […]
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 […]
Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe. Adapted and directed by Ng Choon Ping for Yellow Earth Theatre at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, 13 April 2017. Reviewed by Peter Malin All textual references are to Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great: Parts I and II, ed. by John D. Jump, Regents Renaissance Drama Series (London: Arnold, 1967). […]
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 […]
