Polly Findlay’s production of The Merchant Of Venice at the RSC was conceived and created in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris and the rising tide of racial and religious intolerance in Europe gives the play a relevance which was absent four years ago when Rupert Goold set the RSC’s previous production […]
This is Yukio Ninagawa’s eighth production of Hamlet and it’s on tour in the year of his eightieth birthday although this year, for the first time, he is too ill to travel with his own show. This also marks the thirtieth anniversary of Ninagawa’s first visit to the UK with the ‘cherry blossom’ Macbeth which […]
Koningin Lear [Queen Lear], written by Tom Lanoye, directed by Eric de Vroedt, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Stadsschouwburg Utrecht, the Netherlands, 25 March 2015. Review by Paul Franssen (Utrecht University) Tom Lanoye is known for his radical Shakespeare adaptations, such as Hamlet versus Hamlet, whose female protagonist confronted the First World War, and Ten Oorlog [To War], […]
Reviewed by Kevin Riordan (Nanyang Technological University) At the moment it’s hard for a show in Singapore to not be somehow about Singapore. The nation’s fiftieth birthday—branded “SG50”—approaches this August and theater companies have joined, both wittingly and unwittingly, in this moment of national reflection: The Esplanade (the performing arts center whose exterior alludes to […]
Review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Gavin Quinn at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 21st February 2015. Reviewed by Emer McHugh Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway There is a moment towards the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that may have provided the springboard for Gavin Quinn’s production at the Abbey […]
Love’s Labour’s Won [Much Ado About Nothing]: RSC Education Schools Broadcast Royal Shakespeare Company Dir. Christopher Luscombe Royal Shakespeare Theatre/Ravensbourne University 30 April 2015 Much Ado About Nothing, here renamed Love’s Labour’s Won to fit with the RSC’s other offerings during Winter 2014-15, is a play about two people who refuse to countenance that […]
In 2013 I posted an article on this blog saying it’s time a black actor was cast as Iago. Now, in 2015, the RSC has, for the first time, cast a black actor, Lucian Msamati, in the role. Coincidence? Well yes, probably, but if it means Greg Doran, the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare […]
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 […]
King Lear in Transit – Time Travel through Translation and Performance Reviewed by Kinga Földváry Translation is an issue for us in Hungary. It is an issue in Hungarian Shakespeare studies, and it is an equally relevant and lively area of debate concerning Shakespearean performance, so much so that translations and retranslations may even come […]
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy Lazarus Theatre Company Blue Elephant Theatre, Camberwell 8 October 2013 Reviewed by Peter Malin References to the play are to Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, ed. by Clara Calvo and Jesús Tronch, Arden Early Modern Drama (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). Ricky Dukes’s cut-down production of Kyd’s tragedy, coming in at 1 […]
