What: The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
Who: The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)
Where: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), Stratford-Upon-Avon, England
When: 14th August 2018
This new production of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor is quite perplexing in places but I found it a whole lot more enjoyable than their current Romeo and Juliet. And I think audiences in general will concur.
What: Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Who: The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)
Where: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
When: October 2017
Coriolanus is, in its full form, the second longest play in Shakespeare’s canon. Performed in its entirety it would take up four hours or more of your life. Here at the RSC, it takes 2 hours and forty minutes – three hours if you include the break in the middle for ice cream.
What: Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
Where: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon,
Who: The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)
When: 4th July 2017
The RSC’s current production of “Titus Andronicus” is a bloody mess.
And that is both a good thing and a bad thing.
“Titus Andronicus” is meant to be violent and bloody and the RSC have achieved that with great aplomb.
However, “Titus Andronicus” is meant (in my view) to be macabre rather than comedic and here too much is played simply for laughs.
What: King Lear by William Shakespeare
Who: Royal Shakespeare Company
Where: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK
In the recent Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) presentation of Hamlet, a classroom scene is created at the beginning at which the title of the play is spoken to announce young Hamlet’s graduation and then the scene is cleared and the play proper begins. I think it was meant to be clever but really it served no purpose. At the beginning of this performance of Lear a group of maybe 10 actors take the stage shrouded in something like lepers’ attire or flimsy beggar garb as shelter against the cold night. When the actors enter for the first scene proper they leave hastily too – shooed away. But this time the importance of this scene is not lost on the rest of the production. Rather, it adds. And like most everything here, it is solid and meaningful.
Solid.
twilightdawning 