Shakespeare

Bard in the Botanics

19 Jun 2008

If you accept the notion that ‘a sad tale’s best for winter’, it follows that a pair of comedies make the best entertainment for a summer backdrop. The programmers behind Bard in the Botanics certainly appear to think so. This year, Glasgow’s outdoor…

The Winter's Tale

4 Oct 2007

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until Sat 20 Oct CLASSIC So much of Shakespeare’s work examines the disparity between the rational, ordered world, governed by laws and etiquettes long since agreed and more pre-rational, primal urges and experiences, but…

Hamlet

4 Oct 2007

The widespread belief that society is in deep moral decline is hardly unique to our age – indeed, there have been few times in history when this wasn’t a preoccupation of the public at large. What makes our society a little more unique, and renders Guy…

Hamlet - preview

20 Sep 2007

If I had a Kroner for every time someone reinvented Hamlet, I could afford a cruise to Denmark. If it’s not being set in Nazi Germany or a mental institution, the lead is being performed by – Gosh o’blood – a woman, the whole thing’s being done in the…

The Winter's Tale - interview

20 Sep 2007

Ever dealt with the green-eyed monster? If not, you’re lucky, but most likely you have. Mark Thomson, never one to shirk the “difficult” plays of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, has chosen to begin the Lyceum’s autumn season with The Winter’s Tale. Aside from…

Petition launched by Bard sceptics

10 Sep 2007

Almost 300 people have signed a petition calling for an investigation into the works of William Shakespeare. Among those who claim it is not possible the plays could have been penned by the 16th Century commoner are actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark…

Macbeth

6 Sep 2007

There’s nothing particularly new about updating Shakespeare’s medieval Scottish tragedy to a modern criminal underworld setting - see the 1956 American mob movie Joe Macbeth - but Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Wright nevertheless makes a decent stab at…

I, Lear

16 Aug 2007

Two bumbling actors (Andrew Jones and Ciaran Murtagh) share their wisdom of the theatre, including tricks of the trade such as Marmite up the nostrils for upset and spray cream foaming at the mouth for anger. They teach us techniques from the likes of…

Macbeth: Who is That Bloodied Man?

Nicola Husband

16 Aug 2007

Macbeth, like most of Will’s plays, has suffered from many strange interpretations, including a film that transposes the action to a 90s rave and an American theatre version that quite literally strips the characters bare. These wacky interpretations…

Romeo and Juliet

16 Aug 2007

Having finally got over Baz Luhrmann’s version, it feels like we can move on to a new approach to this popular, if flawed, old Shakespearean standby. If Peter Meineck’s version for Aquila doesn’t quite make for a new ‘standard’, it certainly…

Romeo and Juliet

Festival Fringe

1 Aug 2007

‘Maybe Romeo and Juliet was such an old warhorse we needed to put a bomb under it.’ It’s fighting talk to some, but it’s the kind of statement you’d let through from Peter Meineck, co-founder and joint artistic director of Aquila, one of the USA’s most…

René Weis

Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography (John Murray)

12 Mar 2007

LITERARY ANALYSIS Combining taut prose with tight scholarship, René Weis has written a gripping biography of the world’s most famous Bard. With the great man’s life notoriously wreathed in mystery, Weis has plunged into the works for clues. He cites…

Merchant of Venice, The

The Merchant of Venice

2 Oct 2006

CLASSIC It’s easy enough to see, in Britain’s current climate of religious intolerance, why Mark Thomson should wish to open the Lyceum’s new season with Shakespeare’s tale of money and racism. It is one of Shakespeare’s trickiest pieces. Our 21st…

Stage Whispers

Theatre news

2 Oct 2006

There’s so much happening in the theatre at present that Whispers is once again forced to put aside his usual egotistical ravings to flag up some entertainments that we couldn’t find space for amid our rush of reviews.

Merchant of Venice, The

The Merchant of Venice

18 Sep 2006

CLASSIC Shakespeare’s great commentary on the unease between Christians and Jews has suffered, over the years, with some of the most tortured attempts to make it conform to one thesis or another imaginable. All of his work, of course, has been…

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Dundee Rep, until Sat 16 Sep

7 Sep 2006

CLASSIC Reinhardt’s 1934 version of A Midsummer Night’s Dreamwas set on a hillside amidst a specially planted forest; Brook’s 1971 vision was in a white box space with trapeze artists and Michael Hoffman’s 1999 film placed the action in 19th century…