‘Experiment begins‘. The audience is entering the auditorium of the Cottesloe Theatre, and they are also entering the waiting room of the Raushen Pharmaceutical Company where drug trials will take place. We are given wristbands to add to the effect that we are also patients in the trial. Sitting on mustard yellow seats, on the red carpet the next a small coffee…
Read more The Effect (National Theatre, November 2012- January 2013)
2012 was the year that I kept thinking, I will blog about that and then never got round to it. I always wanted to write some longer pieces on some of the productions, but I put it off, because I am working on a larger project that is taking up my time at the moment.…
The Olivier stage is a large space and this production uses the space extremely well. The large towering buildings move around to represent different parts of the city, and even become the shipwreck where the twins were separated. There is a sense of the commercial business taking place in the city as well as the…
Read more Comedy of Errors (National Theatre, 31st December 2011)
In 2011, the sublime was a popular topic of discussion. At the National Theatre there was Frankenstein and in the John Martin exhibition at the Tate, the sublime was on show in a spectacular way. The John Martin exhibition was my favourite exhibition of the year. The epic was presented on grand canvases, but what…
Here is my best of.. lists. The following post discusses what I thought about the year. Shakespeare in the Theatre 1. Romeo and Juliet (RSC at the RST) 2. Much Ado About Nothing (Globe) 3. Hamlet (The National Theatre) 4. Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham’s) 5.The Comedy of Errors (Propeller at Sheffield) 6. Antony and Cleopatra with Katy Stephens and Darrell D’Silva (RSC…
When I came out of the NT Live screening of the National Theatre’s Hamlet last December, my first response was that the director Nicholas Hytner wanted to create a production that was very different from Greg Doran’s 2008 production. Whereas in Doran’s production, David Tennant played up the comedy, I felt that Kinnear’s performance was…
I am writing this blog as part of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Happy Shakespeare blog project www.happybirthdayshakespeare.com I decided to join the project, because as a blogger I am often writing about going to see Shakespeare’s plays performed, and felt it appropriate to write about why I enjoy seeing Shakespeare in performance so much. Charles…
Read more Happy Birthday Shakespeare – On going to see Shakespeare’s plays and why I do.
The National Theatre’s production felt like it was a GOOD polished clean production, without some of the roughness that makes a production not just a good, but an exciting and thought-provoking one. It was the kind of production that didn’t leave me disappointed, on the other hand it didn’t leave me thinking about the text in ways that I…
Read more Twelfth Night (National Theatre, 12th February 2011)
Theatre: Shakespeare 1. Romeo and Juliet (RSC). 2. King Lear (RSC). 3. As You Like It (West Yorkshire Playhouse). 4. Measure for Measure (Almeida). 5. The Winter’s Tale (RSC/Roundhouse). 6. Henry IV part 2 (Globe). 7. Macbeth (Globe). 8. Antony and Cleopatra (RSC). 9. Antony and Cleopatra (Liverpool Playhouse). 10. Hamlet (The Crucible, Sheffield). 11.…
Marianne Elliott is a really thoughtful director who considers very carefully the aesthetic of a production. I felt that she has done a really good job with Middleton’s macabre Women Beware Women, and her choice of twentieth-century Italian costumes works very well. Central to the play is the game of chess between Leantio’s mother and Livia. The game becomes a metaphor…
Read more Women Beware Women (National Theatre, 5th June 2010)
Julie Raby 