Henry VI: the RSC is back with a show of strength
What gives the six-hour affair its compelling immediacy is clear characterisation and speech, fluidity of action – the battle-scenes choreographed with dynamic vigour – and an engulfing…
Deborah Warner interview: We need another Beckett to shake up theatre
“It’s the size of an acorn!” Deborah Warner tells me, almost gleefully. “I’m running the smallest theatre on the planet!” This might not be strictly true, but…
Is ‘community theatre’ really going to unite a divided Britain?
In fact, the notion that the non-trained may well act and speak differently, and yes, whisper it, in a less markedly competent fashion than battle-hardened thesps, can…
Is ‘community theatre’ really going to unite a divided Britain?
In fact, the notion that the non-trained may well act and speak differently, and yes, whisper it, in a less markedly competent fashion than battle-hardened thesps, can…
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, review: abundant diversity, feelgood inclusivity and hallucinogenic sets
There’s never a dull minute, costume-wise; designer Melissa Simon-Hartman employs magnificent head-dresses, bushy grass-skirts, flowing robes, a vivid imagination and a seemingly blank cheque: the amount of…
Let’s stop fretting about how we teach Shakespeare
My grandfather, who worked down the mines, on retirement, decided to take an Open University degree in English literature. For him, the prospect of Milton’s Paradise Lost…
Why this is the worst time for touring theatre in generations
Indeed, a more highbrow offering with a star name attached can reap rewards (as the touring production of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets with Ralph Fiennes has proved)….
Gregory Doran: my memories of a life with Antony Sher
We collected together all the manuscripts of his novels, the typescripts of his journals, and stored a lifetime of diaries in a very large case. His artwork…
Shakespeare’s sonnets are not racist but they can be unsettling
Of Sonnet 131, they gloss the final couplet thus: “Your physical blackness is as nothing compared to the blackness of your behaviour, and that is why others…
John Kani: when Antony Sher and I reinvented ‘The Tempest’
It’s astonishing to think that a play written in the 17th century could feel so relevant and powerful and poignant. When people saw our production, they all…
Antony Sher, last of the guts-and-glory ‘heroic’ actors, has left his mark on a generation
An audio recording (held by the British Library), in which Sher’s Richard wooingly confronts the grieving, widowed Lady Anne beside the hearse of Henry VI, registers an exhilarating…
A Netflix for arts lovers? It might work in Italy, but not here
But there is a wider problem with the idea of a British cultural Netflix, that is shaped by our national identity. We have a problem with the…