Dr Peter Kirwan

Author: Peter Kirwan

  • Richard III (Shakespeare in the Park) @ The Delacorte, via Great Performances on PBS

    Richard III (Shakespeare in the Park) @ The Delacorte, via Great Performances on PBS

    At a time when most major theatre companies are looking to use Richard III as a vehicle to give a disabled actor a starring role as a way of speaking back to a history of ‘cripped-up’ tour de forces by able-bodied actors, Robert O’Hara’s production for New York’s Shakespeare in the Park (directed for the…

  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Every now and again, I’ve been lucky to see a revival of an existing play that makes that play feel freshly written, as if designed for that company and that moment. The reworking of Death of a Salesman for an African American family; Theatre Wallay’s reworking of The Taming of the Shrew as a commentary…

  • The Winter’s Tale (MBU Shakespeare & Performance) @ The Wharf Loft

    The Winter’s Tale (MBU Shakespeare & Performance) @ The Wharf Loft

    The operations of time are central to The Winter’s Tale, not only in the explicit personification of the concept to waft over a generational gap of time, but in the work of duration. An hour-long cut of The Winter’s Tale can easily tell the plot, which is surprisingly straightforward, Autolycus’s machinations aside – and as…

  • Rosaline (film)

    Rosaline (film)

    Towards the end of Rosaline, the titular hero (Kaitlyn Dever) asks her new boyfriend Dario (Sean Teale) if, when this story is told centuries from now, whether their names will be even mentioned. ‘Honestly, I couldn’t care less’ replies Dario. It’s indicative of some of the tonal and thematic confusion of Rosaline that it’s the…

  • William Shakespeare: A Brief Life, by Paul Menzer

    William Shakespeare: A Brief Life, by Paul Menzer

    The title of Paul Menzer’s new biography of Shakespeare – the first in the Arden Shakespeare Insights series designed to support the forthcoming Arden Fourth Series – alludes to one of the weightier tomes in Shakespearean biographical writing. Indeed, S. Schoenbaum’s William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life was so hefty that it spawned a less back-straining…

  • Henry VI, Part 1 (MBU Shakespeare & Performance) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Henry VI, Part 1 (MBU Shakespeare & Performance) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Who cleans up the messes created by our leaders? Kyle Showalter, apparently. Summoned onstage by a click from the fingers of Anna Taylor’s imperious Winchester, Showalter’s unnamed servant began sweeping away the red and white petals that had littered the Blackfriars stage during an extended prologue. Later, Showalter’s servant appeared again, laying down a burgundy…

  • Born With Teeth (Alley Theatre) @ The Guthrie Theater, McGuire Proscenium Stage

    Born With Teeth (Alley Theatre) @ The Guthrie Theater, McGuire Proscenium Stage

    It’s quite a leap for a bit of fairly rarified attribution studies to lead to a lavish staging of a piece of slash fanfic. But for Liz Duffy Adams, the arguments of the New Oxford Shakespeare that Marlowe and Shakespeare collaborated on the Henry VI plays were enough to prompt a new ninety-minute play, first…

  • The Birth of Merlin (Treehouse Shakespeare Ensemble) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    The Birth of Merlin (Treehouse Shakespeare Ensemble) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Never has a side-eye side-eyed more side-eydily than the side-eye of George Durfee’s Toclio. Amid a court of international intrigue, royal marriages, internecine conflicts, and warring magicians, the smooth Toclio – whose sudden appearance at one point caused the Briton nobles to jump in shock, and who was often the only representative of the Britons…

  • King Lear (Shakespeare Theatre Company) @ The Klein Theatre

    King Lear (Shakespeare Theatre Company) @ The Klein Theatre

    Few Lears have ever made an entrance with the panache of Patrick Page in Simon Godwin’s already-lauded Shakespeare Theatre Company production. The doors of the hangar (designed by Daniel Soule) in which his daughters, sons-in-law and attendants waited anxiously slid open. A full-size small plane could be seen through the doors, its running lights throwing…

  • Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    “It’s a story of men killing men killing men killing women killing men killing men killing men killing children killing men killing men killing men killing clowns killing men killing men killing men killing flies” crooned the pyjama-clad, all-female-identifying company of the Globe’s Titus Andronicus. The promise of this opening number – a murder ballad,…