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…
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”…
Hamlet, review: by all means take a blowtorch to Shakespeare – just not like this
You can see the thinking: cast a comedian as the Prince, put in some swearing, some songs by the Smiths and a ton of gags, and you…
Why every arts company needs a Tamara Rojo
Of course, she is not the first performer to take up a managerial role. In fact, the artist who becomes a manager is particularly common in the…
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…
Measure for Measure, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, review: yet another disservice to Shakespeare
Shakespeare is fascinated with intricately opposed psychological states – again and again, people seem one thing, but prove another. In Measure for Measure, he probes that duality…