Shakespeare
The Hollow Crown: Henry V, BBC TwoSunday, 22 July 2012
Forget the ages-old talk of London buses arranging their schedules so that they all arrive at once. The capital's patterns of public transport have nothing on the rapidity with which Henry V has hoved into view of late, whether at Shakespeare's... Read more... |
Shakespeare: Staging the World, British MuseumSaturday, 21 July 2012
Where on earth do you begin if all the world’s a stage? When not sifting through the entrails of dynastic English history or sunning themselves in Italy, the plays of Shakespeare really do put a girdle round the known globe. They send postcards from... Read more... |
Desdemona, Barbican HallSaturday, 21 July 2012
Peter Sellars has a talent for controversy, from his early days when he was the director who brought you Così fan tutte set in a diner on Cape Cod, Don Giovanni as a cocaine-snorting, Big Mac-eating slum thug, and Figaro getting married in Trump... Read more... |
Timon of Athens, National TheatreWednesday, 18 July 2012
As the much-loved Arthur Marshall so profoundly noted, Ibsen is “not a fun one”. One could, with as much truth, say the same about Shakespeare’s rarely staged Timon of Athens: its misanthropy, missing motivations and mercurial shifts in temper do... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2, BBC TwoSunday, 15 July 2012
One intends no discredit to the keenly judged monarch-to-be that is Tom Hiddleston's Prince Hal, who will reappear on the small screen next weekend carrying the story forward in Henry V, to point out that Richard Eyre's terrific BBC adaptation... Read more... |
Otello, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 13 July 2012
Pardon the anomaly of a lightly browned-up Latvian Moor married to a German-Greek beauty. This, after all, is not Shakespeare’s play but Verdi’s opera, for which all too few are born to sing heroic tenor Otello and lyric-dramatic soprano Desdemona.... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 1, BBC TwoSunday, 08 July 2012
Now we're talking! Following on from a small-screen Richard II of greater aural than visual interest, along comes Richard Eyre's TV adaptation of both Henry IV plays, and the first thing that seems evident about Part One is how well it would... Read more... |
The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 05 July 2012
The Taming of the Shrew celebrates its own rumbustious, raucous (mis)behaviour, so why shouldn't Shakespeare's comedy be granted a production that follows suit? From an opening gambit involving bodily fluids sprayed in the direction of the... Read more... |
The Hollow Crown: Richard II, BBC TwoSunday, 01 July 2012
There was some pretty serious hair on view in the BBC's new film of Richard II, a play better-known for its luxuriant verse, and well there might be, given that the adaptation came to us courtesy that most fulsomely-maned of theatre directors,... Read more... |
The Grand Tour/ Faster/ The Dream, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeThursday, 28 June 2012
Cafés, ballets, it’s all the same to the mighty petty bullyboys of the London Olympics, who have not only devised two of the most revolting mascots in Olympic history (the one-eyed slugs Wenlock and Mandeville) but also employed teams of... Read more... |
Julius Caesar, BBC Four/Match of the Day Live, BBC OneMonday, 25 June 2012
“Let slip the dogs of war.” Somewhere in the bowels of Kiev’s Olympic Stadium, a football coach will have said something along these lines around the half seven mark. Meanwhile, over on the clever-clever channel, an alternative meeting between... Read more... |
Simon Schama's Shakespeare, BBC TwoSaturday, 23 June 2012
With every new series, as he edges closer and closer to Dimbleby-ian National Treasure status, Simon Schama’s archly mannered drawl becomes more and more pronounced, his camp asides more central to his on screen persona. He is getting awful grand.... Read more... |
