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 […]
Stage versus screen? Richard II (RSC) @ Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (11 November 2013) and Renoir Cinema, London (12 November 2013) Originally posted on Erin Sullivan’s blog at digitalshakespeares.wordpress.com. Review by Erin Sullivan The other week I did something unusual, at least for me – I saw the same Shakespeare production back-to-back, going to a Tuesday […]
Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a co-production by English National Opera and Netherlands Opera in collaboration with Complicite. London Coliseum, 7th November – 7th December, 2013. Review by Catherine Alexander A letter from Friedrich Wilhelm Burger to August Schlegel dated 31st October, 1791, a month after the first performance of The Magic Flute in Vienna on […]
Directed by Dan Jemmett. Review by Ruth Morse Anyone who has crossed the Channel on a Eurostar train is likely to have seen the French poster which depicts a standing skeleton holding a fleshly human head at arm’s length. In France it is an instantly recognizable reference to the phrase ‘To be or not to be’, […]
Cymbeline, directed by Sâmir Bhamra for Phizzical at the Grand Opera House, Belfast, Northern Ireland. 29 October 2013. Review by Sonja Kleij, Romano Mullin, and Matt Williamson. It is clear from the start that this is no ordinary production. As Cymbeline begins, the two leads appear to a blast of Indian pop, brandishing microphones and […]
Hamlet, directed by Maciej Englert, Teatr Współczesny w Warszawie, Warsaw, Poland. 30 November 2013. https://www.wspolczesny.pl/ https://www.wspolczesny.pl/repertuar/biezacy/hamlet Review by Magdalena Cieślak The curtain goes up. Centre stage, there is a chair slightly resembling that in Olivier’s Hamlet. A person is sitting in that chair in a pose slightly recalling Olivier’s brooding prince. As courtiers start pouring in, the solitary figure – […]
The Taming of the Shrew, unknown director, for Jaracza Theatre, Łódź, Poland, 24 October 2013. https://www.teatr-jaracza.lodz.pl/poskromienie.html Review by Agnieszka Rasmus In his review of Michael Bogdanov’s RSC production in 1978, Michael Billington famously wondered “whether there is any reason to revive a play which seems totally offensive to our age and society” (qtd. in Thompson 2003:17). […]
Macbeth, OPRA Cymru, dir. by Patrick Young, 28 September 2013 at Y Llwyfan, Carmarthen. Review by Alun Thomas Judging by the small scattering of people at ‘Y Llwyfan’ tonight there doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming demand for Welsh-language Shakespeare in opera form. This is a shame, because OPRA Cymru’s adaptation of Verdi’s Macbeth is an […]
Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Tarell Alvin McCraney, RSC Swan Theatre, November 2013. Review by Andrew Cowie. When Charles Spencer described the RSC’s 2013 Antony and Cleopatra in The Telegraph newspaper as a ‘travesty’ and ‘a fiasco’ connoisseurs of train-wreck theatre hurried to book their tickets. All the warning signs were there; a young American director, Tarell […]
Hamlet, directed by Mikko Viherjuuri. Tampere Theater, Finland, 8 May 2013. By Nely Kein änen. Mikko Viherjuuri’s Hamlet opens not with a voice calling out “Who’s there?” but with a scene Shakespeare didn’t write (yet composed of lines he did), a private moment between Hamlet, Ophelia and Laertes before they’re forced to join […]
