The mystery of how Stratford lad Shakespeare knew so much about the world
Key locations The jealous Leontes may have had no real-life counterpart, but Sicily was a kingdom, by various definitions, between 1130 and 1816 – its rulers seated…
The Northman: like Hamlet, with an absolute shedload of pillaging (and a terrifying Nicole Kidman)
You’ve certainly never seen a Hamlet quite like this before. To a backdrop of volcanoes spewing their applause, heads roll liberally in The Northman, several tumbling from…
Is this a low-budget Jean-Michel Jarre gig which I see before me?
There is much to commend in director Amy Leach’s new production of Macbeth for Leeds Playhouse. In Jessica Baglow, it boasts a Lady Macbeth who is by…
Amol Rajan Interviews Ian McKellen, review: this Hollywood heavyweight doesn’t need silly questions
One slight problem underlying Amol Rajan Interviews: Ian McKellen (BBC Two) was that the last time the two met, McKellen told Rajan that he would never perform…
Merchant of Venice for the cancel-culture era proves hectoring and dramatically deadened
How do you stage Shakespeare’s most problematic play in the cancel culture era? One solution, as proffered by the Globe, is to place trigger warnings – “This…
Henry V, review: Kit Harington echoes Volodymyr Zelensky as real life upstages art
Luckily, the production’s hallmark is an unshowy clarity that lets us digest what’s before us, without being so conceptually confining as to prohibit our thoughts straying towards…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Scottish Opera, review: some glorious singing and an equine tour de force
Shakespearean opera is a notoriously tricky art form, and the genre since Verdi’s great Otello and Falstaff is littered with noble failures. But there have been recent…
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…
‘He thought he was destined for something greater’: meet America’s most dramatic assassin
Junius died in 1852, just as Edwin’s career was beginning. In 1855, John made his debut. Over time, he established himself as a fiery, physical performer. He…
Hamlet holds ‘racist’ views of black people, Globe claims in drive to decolonise Shakespeare’s work
Hamlet describes his evil uncle Claudius as a “moor” but his own beloved father as “fair”, showing an equivalence of “dark” with “bad” and “light/fair” with “good”…
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…
Hamlet, review: Freddie Fox rises feverishly to the occasion
Before he even opens his mouth as Hamlet, Freddie Fox pulls off a mesmeric, show pony bit of acting. His deathly-white, spotlit face slowly creases into tear-raddled…
Why Brave New World is a terrifying guidebook to our future
The underlying assumption of the book is that humans are biochemical algorithms, that science can hack the human algorithm, and that technology can then be used to…
Why Shakespeare – and Del Boy – gave us the phrases that live longest
So it seems wrong to think that once upon a time we scattered our speech with noble phrases from the Bible and Shakespeare, but now can only…
Traditional phrases sent to the knacker’s yard – the 50 ‘endangered’ sayings
People who pepper their speech with traditional phrases may find they are casting their pearls before swine, after new research found that dozens of sayings are at…
The nihilistic New Puritans are killing off our culture
The Taming of the Shrew holds the distinction of being the most performed Shakespeare play that is most rarely shown in its entirety. While modern audiences remain…
Ben John: Nazi sympathiser ordered to read classic literature is jailed
A Nazi sympathiser told to read classic literature as he avoided prison for a terror offence will now be jailed, after the sentence was ruled to be…
Romeo and Juliet, Southwark Playhouse, review: 80s-set Shakespeare is an unexpected nostalgia trip
There’s a lot of nostalgia for the 1980s knocking around, as well as a good bit of looking back in anguish. The signs are everywhere, from The…
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…
Romeo and Juliet, Southwark Playhouse, review: 80s-set Shakespeare is an absorbing nostalgia trip
There’s a lot of nostalgia for the 1980s knocking around, as well as a good bit of looking back in anguish. The signs are everywhere, from The…
France celebrates 400 years of Molière — but is he as good as Shakespeare?
When the French refer to their native tongue, they often call it the “language of Molière” and as their most famous comic playwright turns 400, he remains…
50 masterpieces that will make you cry
POP MUSIC by Neil McCormick In the Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (1955)The great crooner’s turbulent, short-lived second marriage to Ava Gardner resulted in this moody,…
Why we all relate to literature’s ‘ugly’ heroes
Like Cyrano, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame acknowledges that the link between physical desire and the “higher” yearning for a kindred spirit are not easily reconciled. Roxane vows…
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…
History’s greatest whodunnit would be ruined if we solved it
The enigma of the Princes in the Tower was last year crowned History’s Greatest Mystery in a poll by BBC History Magazine. Millais’s tender painting of the…