Storifying
The journalist is a filter, ordering chaos to make it digestible for anyone who has the yen to understand.
The Comedy of Errors
The first and final scenes of this open-air Comedy of Errors feel dashed off, as if director Philip Franks couldn’t be bothered to do much with them. This isn’t as big a problem as it might be in a different play: The Comedy of Errors is mostly middle.
Romeo and Juliet
This is an admirably efficient Romeo and Juliet; but it can’t pretend it has anything whatsoever to say about Fascism.
Big Mac
Updating Macbeth to modern-day Hollywood is a concept with promise. Celebrity is the new royalty, and defamation in the media is as good as death. Big Mac – developed and presented by pupils of two Oxford schools – delivers on very little of this promise.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream ***
Throughout this visually stunning Dream there’s a nagging sense that the Beijing Film Academy are trying to put one over on us; to distract us with twinkly lights and tumbly fights in the hope that we won’t notice the many holes in their adaptation.
Ophelia (drowning) ****
The clear, rippling water – jets turned up high for maximum eddying – is the source of some striking, moving visuals in this collage of Hamlet, pop lyrics and Deborah Levy’s Pushing the Prince into Denmark.
Arts Futurism – the international live theatre exchange
Is NT Live the first step towards shattering live theatre’s international boundaries?
Updating the Bard whether he likes it or not
Britons’ familiarity with Shakespeare allows directors to skimp on making sense.
All’s Well That End Well
Perhaps under other circumstances having ’solved’ All’s Well would be enough of an achievement, but this is the National we’re talking about; it’s perfectly justifiable to demand more.
Macbeth
Considering it’s part of Riverside Studios’ Madness season, and staged by a company called Love&Madness, the exploration of madness in this Macbeth is surprisingly superficial.
