This is a very strange play and at the end of it, I wasn’t clear at all about what it was about. Patrick Stewart plays Shakespeare in his retirement at New Place. There are scenes with his daughter Judith and also the servants. Maybe the play was about the banality of Shakespeare’s later life when…
The Changeling is one of my favourite plays. This is a modern version that plays up the surrealism in the play. One of the highlights was the wedding scene, which was brilliantly played. Food became sexy, but it also became the blood. The play is about sex and madness and this production drew on these…
Read more Short Review: The Changeling (Young Vic, February 18th 2012)
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…
The year started for me with the National Hamlet, and since then I’ve seen the Northern Broadsides Hamlet, and the Globe’s touring Hamlet. In contrast to all these productions along comes a very unnerving production with Michael Sheen as Hamlet. The play is set in a psychiatric hospital and the concept works in some places and not as…
I really enjoyed Kathryn Hunter’s performance as the Fool in the RSC’s King Lear and was intrigued by her performance as Cleopatra, but I thought Hunter’s performance as Red Peter the Ape was amazing. It’s one of those performances that just stuns because what happens in the performance is so unexpected. I’d never been to the…
Julie Raby 