The RSC production of Romeo and Juliet which is currently playing in its Stratford-Upon-Avon base and which will transfer to the Roundhouse in Camden, London later in the year is a golden opportunity to see one of the finest productions of Shakespeare in many a year.
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Courtyard Theatre
27th May 2010
Antony and Cleopatra
I normally get to see the RSC’s productions at the beginning of their run and I’m then able to prepare the review early. This one is unusual as, because of my personal workload, I didn’t get to see Twelfth Night until three nights before it finished. I decided to prepare a review anyway – even though it’s likely to influence exactly nothing.
The Winters Tale
RSC at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
23rd July 2009
The RSC have put together a new ensemble which will work on a number of productions between now and 2011. If these first fruits are anything to go by, it promises to be a very good run indeed.
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
As You Like It
23rd of April 2009
In 2007, Neil Bartlett directed a version of “Twelfth Night” for the RSC which held tightly together in the first half of the performance but tended to be more unwieldy after the interval as the drama led us out into countryside celebrations and a hippy-chic interpretation of some of the songs in the second half. It was bright, colourful but a little too flamboyant for its own good. Watching Michael Boyd’s take on “As You Like It” at the Courtyard in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I began to wonder if this production was going to fall into the same problems. Tight and precisely directed in the city action of the first scenes, a little too wild in places as the action transferred to the forest in later scenes.
Thursday Night, 12 March 2009
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
RSC Courtyard Theatre, Stratford
Another night with the RSC and another lesson in handling Shakespeare when the director wants to “discover” a flavour of a modern theme in the midst of the script. Janice Honeyman believes that The Tempest will speak powerfully to the world of European Colonialism and African slavery. I believe that her direction and the text’s natural moral direction are at odds with each other and that her insistence on making this idea central to the production may have swamped the play just as badly as Alonso’s ship is swamped by Prospero’s magic.
On Friday, I was in Stratford-Upon-Avon, once more, for the Royal Shakespeare company’s latest production of Romeo and Juliet. It has been an interesting year for the RSC with receipts up because of David Tennant’s involvement in Hamlet and Love’s Labour’s lost but some mixed reviews and varying quality and conceptualisation of productions.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
RSC
Courtyard Theatre
Stratford-Upon-Avon
30th October 2008
I keep wanting to say that is an ordinary production….. but that isn’t true. In fact, in many ways, the production is extraordinary. The stage design, the colours, the movement are all of a very high standard indeed. I don’t even get to say that David Tennant was either extremely good or extremely bad. His performance as Berowne is run-of-the-mill, no better, no worse, albeit very good in parts.
Well, back from 4 days in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
What can I say? The town is a mess. The unnecessary vigour to tear down the old theatre and replace it with a new one as now spread to the Bancroft Gardens. Every inch seems to have been dug over and turned to mud. Fences and scaffold surround everywhere in sight and I felt sorry for those who had travelled from France and Japan (seemed like the only two kind of tourists in evidence!) who had made a long journey and who were missing the old town at its best.
twilightdawning 