Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Read not Dead

  • Mucedorus (Read Not Dead) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Mucedorus (Read Not Dead) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Read Not Dead is currently in the grip of the Before Shakespeare project, offering a series of readings curated to show off some of the finest, genre-bending plays of the late sixteenth century. Mucedorus followed The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune and Fidele and Fortunio, and I was delighted to join the Before Shakespeare team to contribute a pre-show…

  • The Troublesome Reign of King John (Shakespeare’s Globe/Read Not Dead) @ Inner Temple

    The Troublesome Reign of King John (Shakespeare’s Globe/Read Not Dead) @ Inner Temple

    At a hair under four hours (including stalling around the interval), the Globe’s Read not Dead reading of The Troublesome Reign of King John was one of the costliest productions I’ve been to for a long time, causing me to miss my carefully planned coach home from London and buy a new train ticket for £60. Bringing…

  • A Christian Turn’d Turk (Read Not Dead) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    A Christian Turn’d Turk (Read Not Dead) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Back in May, four teams of paired scholars and directors took the stage at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to pitch for the return of a classic Read Not Dead production. We could have had Middleton’s Your Five Gallants. We could have had Lyly’s Sappho and Phao (though perhaps Lyly needs have been better met recently by The Woman in…

  • The Birth of Merlin (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    The Birth of Merlin (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Of the fourteen plays included in C.F. Tucker Brooke’s Shakespeare Apocrypha in 1908 (to be supplanted next month by the RSC Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others, in which I’ve had a hand), I’ve now seen six: The Two Noble Kinsmen (twice), Thomas More, Arden of Faversham (twice), A Yorkshire Tragedy (twice), Fair Em and now this, William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin. Fascinatingly, while Rowley’s play…

  • Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe, Park Street Rehearsal Room

    Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe, Park Street Rehearsal Room

    Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is, arguably, the finest work by the much maligned Robert Greene, a historical romance in the vein of Fair Em and a fine example of the late sixteenth century stable of university conjurer dramas that also produced Doctor Faustus. It no doubt presented Read not Dead first-time director David Oakes with some significant challenges: this is…

  • Gorboduc (Read not Dead) @ The Parliament Room, Inner Temple

    Gorboduc (Read not Dead) @ The Parliament Room, Inner Temple

    Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc is often spoken of as the template for English tragedy. The first play to be written in blank verse and the first to employ dumb shows with its Chorus, the 1561 play establishes many of the conventions that would characterise revenge tragedy especially during the early years of the professional theatre.…

  • The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Read not Dead) @ Sackler Studios, Shakespeare’s Globe

    The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Read not Dead) @ Sackler Studios, Shakespeare’s Globe

    ‘Post-modern before the term was even invented’. So runs the blurb on Shakespeare’s Globe’s ‘Read not Dead‘ webpage, and it’s a fitting description of Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle. A failure when first performed, and an often difficult play in modern revival, the Read not Dead team here excelled themselves with an hysterically funny, theatrically literate…

  • Cardenio (Read not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    We’ve been spoiled for productions and readings of versions of Cardenio/Double Falsehood over the last two years. We’ve had the RSC’s version, two at the Union Theatre, a full production in New York and readings at Nottingham and Warwick. Older but also younger than all of these is Gary Taylor’s “reconstruction” (as opposed to the RSC’s “reimagining”). Taylor has been working on a version combining Theobald’s…

  • Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany (Read not Dead) @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    I’ve never, to my everlasting shame, been to a Read Not Dead reading at the Globe, which is something of a travesty for someone with such an interest in overlooked and rarely-performed early modern drama. To be fair, they’re at 3pm on a Sunday and – as was borne out today – it’s a pain to get…