RSC
David Edgar: 'Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well'Monday, 27 November 2017
Since mid-August, I’ve been doing something I swore I’d never do again. I’ve been rehearsing a new adaptation of a novel by Charles Dickens. Sometime in the autumn of 1979, I received a phone call from Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the Royal... Read more... |
Coriolanus, Barbican review - great, late Shakespeare compels but doesn't stunMonday, 13 November 2017
Coriolanus is post-tragic. It never horrifies like Macbeth or appals like King Lear, though its self-damaging protagonist is disconcerting enough. Shakespeare had written the signature dark dramas by 1606, including the most magnificent of the four... Read more... |
Peter Hall: A ReminiscenceTuesday, 12 September 2017
Theatre artist, political agitator, cultural advocate: Sir Peter Hall was all these and more in a career that defies easy encapsulation beyond stating the obvious: we won’t see his like again any time soon. He helped shape my experience and... Read more... |
Extract: Peter Brook - Tip of the Tongue: Reflections on Language and MeaningSunday, 10 September 2017
A long time ago when I was very young, a voice hidden deep within me whispered, "Don’t take anything for granted. Go and see for yourself." This little nagging murmur has led me to so many journeys, so many explorations, trying to live together... Read more... |
Love's Labour's Lost/Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Theatre Royal HaymarketFriday, 16 December 2016
“The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” A sudden cold breeze blows through the endless summer afternoon of Love’s Labour's Lost in the play’s final moments. Death enters Shakespeare’s Edenic garden and innocence is lost. But what... Read more... |
10 Questions for Director Christopher LuscombeTuesday, 06 December 2016
When Shakespeare visits the bearpit of the West End, it is usually in the company of a big name: Judi Dench, Sheridan Smith, Martin Freeman. This Christmas the bard enters the Theatre Royal, Haymarket without any such support. And there is a... Read more... |
King Lear, RSC, BarbicanFriday, 18 November 2016
At the conclusion of a year in which Britishness has come so resoundingly to the fore of the national debate – and with a play that at the time of its writing, 1605-6, was engaging with that concept no less urgently – the first impression made by... Read more... |
10 Questions for Actor David TroughtonMonday, 14 November 2016
David Troughton (b.1950), a familiar face on television and a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, is a versatile actor. His most recent RSC appearance before Gloucester displayed his talent for comedy: he was a funny and energetic Simon Eyre in... Read more... |
Cymbeline, RSC, BarbicanTuesday, 08 November 2016
“Britain is a world by itself.” It could be the slogan of the year – and rather longer, probably – but the phrase comes from Shakespeare’s late romance Cymbeline. Its Act III scene, in which Britain announces that it is breaking its... Read more... |
The Alchemist, RSC, BarbicanThursday, 15 September 2016
The confidence trick to end all tricks, Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist is so utterly recognisable, so clearly contemporary, that to update the setting feels a bit like underlining the point in red pen. In this transfer from Stratford's Swan Theatre... Read more... |
Doctor Faustus, RSC, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 14 September 2016
What price a human soul? That’s the question Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus asks – a question whose answers are rooted in faith and theology. But in a society with little use for faith and still less for theology, how do you reframe the question? Director... Read more... |
Henry V, RSC, Barbican TheatreFriday, 13 November 2015
Pro patria mori. Now there’s the test for Henry V - perform it on Remembrance Day. The “band of brothers” shtick relies on an idea of patriotism from an age when there was no need to define something so heartfelt, and an idea that kings and... Read more... |
