Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Shakespeare's Globe

  • 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,…

  • The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and Globe Theatre

    The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare’s Globe) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and Globe Theatre

    Sean Holmes’s alternately delicious and stomach-churning serving of The Winter’s Tale began with an act of ostentatiously conspicuous consumption. A table of four were all served with ortolans, the tiny bird eaten whole while wearing a towel over one’s head. The consumption of ortolans, as famously depicted in Succession (a show this production referenced more…

  • Henry V (Shakespeare’s Globe/Headlong) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    Henry V (Shakespeare’s Globe/Headlong) @ The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

    There have been anti-heroic Henry Vs before, but rarely does one commit quite so thoroughly to the bit as did Holly Race Roughan’s production for Shakespeare’s Globe. A collaboration with Headlong, Roughan’s production conflated anti-heroism with anti-theatricalism, or at least with a deconstructed approach to the performance event that formally punctured rhetorical acts of performance.…

  • King Lear @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    King Lear @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    In the programme and on the website for the Globe’s 2022 King Lear can be found a statement that most reviews have leapt upon, noting that director Helena Kaut-Howson, reuniting with Kathryn Hunter twenty-five years after they last collaborated on a production of King Lear, was in a car crash and missed the last two…

  • Henry VIII @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Henry VIII @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    This review is of a preview performance. Amy Hodge’s Henry VIII is the first major mounting of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s play since Six: The Musical, in an era that has also seen a Black woman play Anne Boleyn on television, Thomas Cromwell become a leading figure in Hillary Mantel’s book/television/film juggernaut, and Shakespeare’s Globe stage more confrontations with…

  • Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe) (live-stream)

    Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe) (live-stream)

    If there’s a play that can benefit from some shaking up, it’s Romeo and Juliet. During the pre-performance materials, members of the cast and crew of the Globe’s current production spoke of challenging the idea that the play is a love story. But cultural understandings of Romeo and Juliet are deeply ingrained, and the play’s value for inciting…

  • Macbeth: A Conjuring (Shakespeare’s Globe) (film)

    Macbeth: A Conjuring (Shakespeare’s Globe) (film)

    Macbeth: A Conjuring is a welcome anomaly in the era of streamed and socially distanced theatre. For Bonfire Night 2020, as part of its ‘Shakespeare and Fear’ festival, the Globe reunited the cast of its 2018 Macbeth (reviewed on The Bardathon here) to offer a socially distanced, partially staged reading of the play. It’s a great use of…

  • Romeo and Juliet (Playing Shakespeare with Deutsches Bank) @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    Romeo and Juliet (Playing Shakespeare with Deutsches Bank) @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    The Globe’s choice to release recordings of its Playing Shakespeare productions for young people alongside several of its summer season productions during lockdown has been an inspired choice. Fast, clear and full of energy, Michael Oakley’s version of Romeo and Juliet – filmed efficiently by Glenn Barton – gets a laugh as the Chorus (spoken by Romeo and Juliet themselves) announces…

  • The Merry Wives of Windsor @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    The Merry Wives of Windsor @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    In releasing its 2019 The Merry Wives of Windsor as one of its free YouTube premieres, the Globe justly celebrates one of its finest ensembles (who later in the year went on to perform in Bartholomew Fair). Elle While’s thirties-set production is a jolly, entertaining farce that treats the play with the light touch it deserves (albeit with the anti-immigrant…

  • Macbeth (Playing Shakespeare with Deutsches Bank) @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    Macbeth (Playing Shakespeare with Deutsches Bank) @ Shakespeare’s Globe (archival recording)

    At a taut ninety minutes, the Playing Shakespeare production of Macbeth staged at Shakespeare’s Globe in early 2020 – just before the pandemic shut down theatres – converts well into a pacey film that preserves the raw energy of a production performed to thousands of schoolchildren (always a reliably vocal audience, especially at the Globe) while offering some rare…