King Lear, dir. & libretto by Joke Hoolboom. Holland Opera, Jong Nederlands Blazers Ensemble and “155” dance group. Utrecht, Fort Rijnauwen, 12 July 2019. Review by Paul Franssen (Utrecht University) Holland Opera, formerly known as Xynix, has a long history of musical adaptations of Shakespeare, particularly for the young, including children’s versions of Romeo and […]
King Lear, translated and directed by Jack Nieborg, Shakespeare Theater Diever, The Netherlands, 8 September 2018. Reviewed by by Paul Franssen (Utrecht University) This year, the Diever amateur theatre had chosen King Lear for their annual production. In line with some other recent stage adaptations of Shakespeare plays, the tragedy was set in the world of […]
King Lear, Het Zuidelijk Toneel and het Paleis, directed by Simon de Vos. Utrecht, Stadsschouwburg, 2 February 2018. Review by Paul Franssen (Utrecht University) Like other recent Shakespeare adaptations in the Low Countries, such as Tom Lanoye’s Queen Lear and his Hamlet vs. Hamlet, this production treated the original very freely, changing many features to […]
King Lear at the Old Vic, dir. Deborah Warner, Friday 28th October 2016 Reviewed by Ronan Hatfull, University of Warwick During the interval of the Old Vic’s current production of King Lear, which is directed by Deborah Warner and significantly marks two-time Academy Award winner Glenda Jackson’s return to the stage after serving as an […]
As the baby boom generation moves into old age, ageing audiences, and ageing actors, are increasingly drawn to King Lear which is now staged more frequently than Hamlet. This year alone we’ve already seen Timothy West’s Lear in Bristol, Don Warrington’s in Manchester and Michael Pennington’s in Northampton and later this year Glenda Jackson will play it […]
King Lear, Oxford Theatre Guild, Merton College, Oxford, 11 July 2015. Reviewed by Peter Malin References to the play are to William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. by R. A. Foakes, Arden Shakespeare Third Series (Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1997). Between the work of Michael Dobson and the RSC’s ongoing Open Stages project, amateur theatre has acquired a level of […]
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], […]
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 […]
Reviewed by Rob Ormsby The Stratford Festival’s King Lear takes a timeworn kick at the emotional-realist / Shakespeare-plus relevance can. Director Antoni Cimolino presses his actors to convey every last one of their emotions as plainly as possible and encourages us to see the purportedly timeless significance of the play’s social critiques by adding a […]
