Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Hamlet

  • 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…

  • Ten Percent, ‘Episode 3’ (television episode)

    Ten Percent, ‘Episode 3’ (television episode)

    A group of people in a bar

  • Hamlet (Guildford Shakespeare Company) @ Holy Trinity Church, Guildford

    Hamlet (Guildford Shakespeare Company) @ Holy Trinity Church, Guildford

    This review is of a preview, after press night was delayed. A week or so ago, The Stage awarded its ‘Unsung Heroes’ honour to all understudies, in recognition of a year that has not only seen planned understudies and swings working overtime to keep productions going as casts have fallen prey to COVID, but even old theatre…

  • Hamlet @ The Young Vic

    Hamlet @ The Young Vic

  • Hamlet @ Theatre Royal Windsor

    Hamlet @ Theatre Royal Windsor

    A burst of applause unusual in UK theatres greeeted the entrance of the cast of Hamlet, who walked onstage in a line and stood facing the audience in what looked like a premature curtain call. Perhaps the applause was conservative (this was Windsor, after all), a throwback to an earlier time when the arrival of a…

  • Ophelia (Cake Theatrical Productions) @ Esplanade Theatre Studio (archival recording)

    Ophelia (Cake Theatrical Productions) @ Esplanade Theatre Studio (archival recording)

    ‘My name is Ophelia, and today I will begin by playing Hamlet’. There are many great lines in Natalie Hennedige and Michelle Tan’s Ophelia, performed in English at the Esplanade Theatre Studio in March 2016, but the play is perhaps best summed up in this one, spoken by Jo Kukathas’s Ophelia. This is a deconstruction of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, exploiting the central (and…

  • Ophelia (film)

    Ophelia (film)

    John Everett Millais’s ‘Ophelia’ is a defining pre-Raphaelite work, and a profound interpretive influence on Hamlet, on stage and on screen. It’s the starting point for Claire McCarthy’s film of the same name, as Daisy Ridley’s Ophelia spreads her arms and flowers in a lake and slowly sinks beneath the water. The painting renders Ophelia passive, a victim, a portrait of…

  • Hamlet (Schaubühne Berlin) @ Avignon Festival Theatre (archival recording)

    Hamlet (Schaubühne Berlin) @ Avignon Festival Theatre (archival recording)

    As theatres around the world shut their doors to physical customers, they’re opening their archives. The global lockdown occasioned by the COVID-19 outbreak is hitting theatres hard, but it’s a gesture of goodwill and faith in the importance of theatre that institutions are making their content freely available, and it’s a gesture that I hope…

  • Hamlet @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Hamlet @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Michelle Terry’s first season as Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe has shown a deep engagement with the Globe’s history in its combination of old and new, and nowhere was that more evident that in Hamlet. The introduction of a Globe ensemble, an actor-led rehearsal process (with Federay Holmes and Elle While taking nominal director credits), and the Artistic Director herself in…

  • Hamlet (Almeida) @ The Harold Pinter Theatre

    Hamlet (Almeida) @ The Harold Pinter Theatre

    My expectations have, over the last few years, been set very low for West End Shakespeare; a result of sitting through so many celebrity-headed, bland and conservative productions. An Almeida transfer of a Robert Icke production, however, and one that prompted such divisive reactions, is a different matter and, even transplanted to a more unfriendly space, I…