Henry IV, Part 2, at Colorado Shakespeare Festival at the University Theater, Boulder, Colorado, 3 August 2014 Reviewed by Joseph F. Stephenson The announcement that the venerable Colorado Shakespeare Festival had chosen to stage the seldom-performed Henry IV, Part 2 in its first-ever Original Practices production as part of its recent emphasis on Shakespeare’s history plays […]
The Comedy of Errors, directed by Gordon Barr, the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 4 July 2014, right stalls. Reviewed by Stéphanie Mercier The Glaswegian ‘Bard in the Botanics’ production of The Comedy of Errors at the Macrobert Arts Centre on the Stirling University campus was both part of the troupe’s 2014 season and the British […]
Directed by Elise Davison for Taking Flight Theatre Company at Cyfarthfa Castle, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. 14 June 2014. Reviewed by Evelyn O’Malley Taking Flight Theatre Company aims ‘to work with groups of people who have traditionally been under-represented in theatre’ (2014 online), creating inclusive performances and challenging perceptions of (dis)ability. This promenade production of As You […]
Miranda; directed by Oskaras Koršunovas for OKT/Vilnius City Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania, 17 July 2011. Reviewed by Paweł Schreiber The daughter The title of Oskaras Koršunovas’s performance is, significantly, not The Tempest, but Miranda. In Shakespeare’s play she is one of the most straightforward characters, a naive young girl always subordinated to a man with […]
The Tempest; directed by Maja Kleczewska for Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz, Poland, 4 February 2012. Reviewed by Paweł Schreiber The despot’s home In Maja Kleczewska’s staging of The Tempest, there is no island. It is substituted with a monstrously large, dilapidated room, filled with the detritus of years of family life – a random assortment […]
Twelfth Night; directed by Andreas Forner Lindahl for Shakespeare på Gräsgården at the Bridgettine monastery, Vadstena. Date seen: 22 July, 2014. Reviewed by Kent Hägglund Before the early 1980s, it was very unusual to get to see more that five Swedish Shakespeare productions per year. However, in 1983, there were suddenly ten, and that has continued […]
Directed by Robert Richmond for the Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, United States, 7 February 2014. Reviewed by Katherine L. Bradshaw. Any interpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, by definition, contains an impressive – or perhaps oppressive – amount of dark characters and events. After all, the play centers on a murderer […]
Directed by Ragna Weisteen for Sommarteater på Krapperup in Höganäs, Sweden, 25 July, 2014. Reviewed by Kiki Lindell I saw this production with a group of my students who recently studied and played Romeo and Juliet themselves (in English, at Lund University). Beforehand, they laughingly acknowledged that they fully intended to remain unimpressed, and prefer […]
Reviewed by Andrew Cowie John Webster’s The White Devil must have a label on it somewhere in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s files saying, ‘Avoid this play, and if you must do it, make sure a woman directs it’. Maria Aberg’s new production at the Swan Theatre in Stratford is the first since the Australian director Gale […]
The Taming of the Shrew, dir. Małgorzata Warsicka for Lodz Film School at Studyjny Theatre in Łódź, Poland. January – March 2014. Reviewed by Magdalena Cieślak When the Lodz Film School took up The Taming of the Shrew for their Acting Department diploma performance, it was imperative for me to go and see it. Partly, to compare it […]
