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The Roaring Girl (Treehouse Shakespeare Ensemble) @ The Wharf Studio
For a play that puts so much emphasis on being seen, and being ostentatiously seen – from the fashions of Jack Dapper to the bargaining over clothing in the streets, from the performance of canting to the insistence on visibility in one’s own chosen guise – Treehouse Shakespeare Ensemble’s take on The Roaring Girl found…
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Trust Me, I’m a Doctor!; or Faites-Mois Confiance, Je suits Médecin!: Extracts (Edward’s Boys) @ The Shakespeare Institute
Edward’s Boys get to do the most fun stuff. Some fourteen years (the time it takes to pass through secondary school twice) since the company based at King Edward VI School started bringing productions of familiar and obscure early modern plays to a wider audience, they (under the stalwart leadership of Perry Mills) are now…
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The Revenger’s Tragedy (Cheek by Jowl/Piccolo) @ The Barbican Theatre
In producing a play that turns repeatedly on deceitful appearances, both in the spectacles of power and in staged tricks played on the unsuspecting, Cheek by Jowl’s Revenger’s Tragedy turned theatre itself into the grand metaphor. At the production’s opening, with a stage manager in a headset watching, Fausto Cabra’s Vindice clicked his fingers to bring on the company…
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Women Beware Women (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
For a play of dark corners, shadowy deeds and masque-like spectacle, the Sam Wanamaker is surely the perfect playhouse. In Amy Hodge’s debut production for the Globe, and in collaboration with designer Joanna Scotcher, the SWP was darkened further than usual, with black tiling on floor and tiring house wall, and covers over the lanterns, evoking the moody,…
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The Revenger’s Tragedy (Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company) @ Nottingham Playhouse
NB This review is based on a preview performance. The most striking image of Fiona Buffini’s new production of The Revenger’s Tragedy was that of the opening, with a narrow shaft of light from on high illuminating a skull sat on a chair. Then, to the sound of T-Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’, the Duke, Duchess, Lussurioso and Spurio…
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Women Beware Women (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse
After the previous day’s sprint-to-the-finish The Sea Voyage, it was pleasing to see the ASC ensemble shift the pace for Middleton’s Women Beware Women. This perfectly cast production drew on the established relationships and good humour that have characterised all the shows I’ve seen at the Blackfriars, but also lingered on soliloquies and set-pieces to develop individuals.…
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The Revenger’s Tragedy (Lazarus Theatre Company) @ The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre
At ninety minutes long, Lazarus Theatre’s take on Middleton’s seminal revenge tragedy still felt leaden and ponderous, a dull take on a sparkling play. While the production was full of ideas and some striking performances, the eclectic cutting and rigid spatial organisation rendered the play frequently unintelligible and confusingly abrupt, obfuscating rather than clarifying the…
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The Changeling (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Note: This review is based on a preview performance. The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, as with its more established counterpart, works much better for comedy than tragedy, in my eyes at least. The one outstanding success of the theatre so far has been its side-splitting The Knight of the Burning Pestle, but even in its tragedies it…
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The Roaring Girl (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
The Roaring Girl is a much better idea than it is a play. The idea of the ‘Roaring Girl’ (the title, of course, of the current Swan season) is a fantastic crucible for exploring ideas of gender identity and sexual performance, and the involved plot of shopkeepers’ wives and rakes about town taking advantage of one…
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A Mad World, My Masters (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre
Unusually for the RSC, the poster to Sean Foley’s new production of A Mad World, My Masters (the second I’ve seen, the first professional) advertises itself prominently as ‘edited by Sean Foley and Phil Porter). This is a frustrating statement to read, partly as it implies on some level that the RSC’s other productions aren’t edited or don’t need editing, an implication disingenuous…
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Dr Peter Kirwan 