Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, GarsingtonMonday, 21 June 2010
The beautiful gardens of Garsington Manor might seem an ideal setting for Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its ilex groves, its miniature forests of pyramid yew, and its paths overhung (o’er-canopied?) with climbing roses. So it’s a... Read more... |
Macbeth, GlyndebourneFriday, 18 June 2010
Shakespeare's Macbeth is full of fleetingly funny moments. Halfway through the regicidal Second Act, we stumble upon a castle porter gibbering on about the bodily consequences of drink - "nose-painting, sleep and urine". Verdi's opera mostly shuns... Read more... |
The Epic of England: Adapting Morte d'ArthurFriday, 11 June 2010
The RSC’s Morte d’Arthur is not what you’d call a rushed job. John Barton, the company’s advisory director, has been on a mission to see the work performed for at least 50 years. The director Greg Doran had also been wanting to stage Malory’s epic... Read more... |
Mick Gordon on directing The TempestFriday, 04 June 2010
The central character in Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, is a betrayed Duke called Prospero. Prospero means omniscient panic: an apt name for an all-powerful creator of tempests and general wreaker of revenge. However, the profound appeal of... Read more... |
Henry VIII, Shakespeare's GlobeWednesday, 26 May 2010
After Wolf Hall and The Tudors, Shakespeare's Globe is arriving rather late at this particular historical party, especially given that the Bankside venue brings with it a closer connection to the period than most. Can this theatre animate a rarely... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brighton: Festival Beside the SeasideSunday, 23 May 2010
Site-specific theatre spread from artists’ studios to police cells with the realisation that all the city (and a wee chunk of neighbouring Newhaven) is a stage. Dreamthinkspeak’s Before I Sleep (pictured below), a promenade Festival commission based... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Theatre Director Dominic DromgooleSaturday, 22 May 2010
Dominic Dromgoole (b. Oct.1963) had directed professionally precisely one Shakespeare play - Troilus and Cressida for the Oxford Stage Company, with a then little-known Matt Lucas as Thersites - when he was appointed artistic director of Shakespeare... Read more... |
Two new Hamlets off the tellyFriday, 14 May 2010It's an axiom trotted out in the acting profession that a young male actor measures himself against the role of Hamlet, much as an older one does with Lear. It's been announced this week that a couple more are having a stab at the Prince of Denmark... Read more... |
Freedom of the City, Conway Hall, LondonMonday, 03 May 2010
Eight hours of “improvised and experimental music” would not be on everyone’s list of Bank Holiday essentials, and the marathon programme that constitutes the first half of the two-day Freedom of The City festival could have proved daunting for even... Read more... |
Rufus Wainwright: Pop Star and Opera StarMonday, 29 March 2010
To be born into the extraordinary Wainwright dynasty is to be born onstage, and Rufus has seized his birthright in a giant bear-hug. Mere weeks after the death of his mother, Kate McGarrigle, from cancer in January, the lanky, somewhat Heathcliff-... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oxford: Food, Sex and AmisSunday, 28 March 2010
“If I were a woman I would shag as many of you as had pubes and pricks that gave me sexual pleasure…” No less elderly than he is eminent, Professor Stanley Wells – editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and international authority on the Bard – smiles... Read more... |
The Gods Weep, RSC/Hampstead TheatreThursday, 18 March 2010
Why is it that Method-ist actors are pretty much expected to spend months manically researching the inner minutiae of their character, but a much-lauded playwright can get away without providing any serious insights into his main subject matter?To... Read more... |
