Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Ford

  • Love’s Sacrifice (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    Love’s Sacrifice (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    It is a little dispiriting to find the first of this summer’s Swan plays is another Caroline revenge tragedy in which women are dragged around by their hair and thrown to the ground. This directorial shorthand for women-being-treated-badly is becoming worryingly de rigueur, and its shock-value diminishes with constant repetition and normalisation, especially at the Sam…

  • The Broken Heart (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    The Broken Heart (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    My complaint about tragedies at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse so far has been the productions’ frustrating collective failure to realise that this is a space in which less can be more. In what seems to me to be a lack of confidence in the work of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, the tendency has been to ramp up…

  • ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    The 2014 winter season at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse brings together a range of plays that exemplify what Susan Bennett and others refer to as the ‘Jacobean’ – less a specific historical period and more an aesthetic established as oppositional to Shakespeare, foregrounding sex, violence and abandon. This aesthetic usually updates the setting and cultural…

  • The Witch of Edmonton (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    The Witch of Edmonton (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    (note – this review is of a preview performance) The Roaring Girls season, discussed in previous posts on this blog, ended with an entirely untypical coda. Directed by a man (Gregory Doran), given an early modern setting and appearing divorced from the statements about feminism and gender roles within the RSC that had characterised the rest of the season, The…

  • ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore @ Liverpool Everyman

    An initial glance through the cast list of Chris Meade’s new ‘Tis Pity at the Liverpool Everyman betrayed from the start that this was a severely pared-down affair. Donado, Grimaldi, Bergetto, Poggio, Richardetto and Philotis were all cut, along with their subplots. What remained was a tightly-focussed domestic drama, drawing on the grand Liverpool tradition of emotional kitchen-sink conflict,…

  • ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Warwick University Drama Society) @ Warwick Arts Centre Studio

    Warwick University Drama Society’s new production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore promised a “noir sheen”, and a sheen was duly delivered. Femme fatale? Check, in Maria Askew’s seductive Hippolita. Moody hard men lighting cigarettes under dim street lighting? Check, as Jack Churchill’s skinheaded Grimaldi (referencing the later noir of Taxi Driver) bandaged his bruised wrist. The noise of incessant rainfall? Check. The noir atmosphere,…