A plague upon you all

Strange time, people, strange times.

I owe you all two reviews – one of &Juliet and one of Upstart Crow, both of which I saw earlier this year, back when going to theatre was still a thing (remember that?). But then things happened, and things happened, and a few more things happened, and here we are – I almost don’t want to write them in case they turn out to be the last actual theatre shows I review.

Antony and Cleopatra (2)

The National Theatre managed to significantly redeem itself here and prove that this spring’s Macbeth was a blot on an otherwise impressive run of thoughtful and striking Shakespeare adaptations which bring the star power of their cast to bear on the greats.

Macbeth (3)

National TheatreI’m afraid this production has been widely panned by the critics (there’s a handy round-up here) and my comments are not massively going to buck the trend. And even worse, this is likely to be a kitchen sink review – throwing as many different thoughts together as the production team apparently did…

Photo by Brinkhoff and Moegenburg

Twelfth Night (2)

National Theatre

 

This was a huge amount of rollicking good fun that (despite the casting of a female Malvolia) didn’t try to make Twelfth Night carry anything more than the tale set down by Shakespeare and do it as well as possible.

Aguecheek and Belch. Photo by Marc Brenner.

As You Like it

National Theatre

06/11/2015

Certain theatres carry with them certain expectations. The National Theatre, to me, will always have the childhood thrill which is the due of the scene of some my earliest theatre-going days (The Wind in the Willows, and the excitement of a revolving stage) and due to ever-fresh joy of walking over the Hungerford Bridge to the Southbank. And obviously the National Theatre carries a weight with it in terms of prestige of performance – you should be able to go there in confidence that the show you see will be pretty damn good. As You Like It was pretty damn good. More than that – it was fresh and it was very very funny.

His word is more than the miraculous harp.

I’ve been very quiet recently – I’ve just come back from the rather spectacular Wilderness festival in Oxfordshire. So I’m afraid this is a bit of a “what I did on my holidays” post.