Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: The Two Noble Kinsmen

  • 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…

  • The Two Noble Kinsmen (Ketterer’s Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute (webstream)

    The Two Noble Kinsmen (Ketterer’s Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute (webstream)

    A mistake that productions of The Two Noble Kinsmen often make is rendering the titular kinsmen indistinguishable from one another. But for Ketterer’s Men*, the distinctions between Palamon (Curtis Dunn) and Arcite (Kelly Downes) were as important as the similarities. This production, by turns melancholic and hilarious in tone, suggested that, for all the play’s…

  • The Two Noble Kinsmen @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    The Two Noble Kinsmen @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Barrie Rutter’s Northern Broadsides were one of the first companies to perform in the incipient Shakespeare’s Globe, and in many ways that company’s ensemble ethos, physicality and love of music make them ideal inhabitants of the outdoor amphitheatre. In his first production since retiring from Broadsides, Rutter showed no sign of leaving behind that company’s ethos,…

  • The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    Just over a decade since I saw the RSC’s Canterbury Tales company offer a fascinating script-in-hand staging of The Two Noble Kinsmen, it was a pleasure to return to the Swan at last for a full-scale professional production, especially in the hands of Blanche McIntyre, fresh from a superb Noises Off at Nottingham Playhouse. While I’m not convinced that this is…

  • The Two Noble Kinsmen (Just Enough) @ The Dell, Stratford-upon-Avon

    Another landmark! A little over five years ago, I saw an excellent rehearsed reading of The Two Noble Kinsmen at the Swan. Since then, I’ve been waiting for a chance to see a full production. It’s the last of the plays in the universally-accepted thirty-eight that I’d not seen a “proper” version of, and now I’ve got…

  • The Two Noble Kinsmen (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

    I had to get a lift into Stratford and queue for day tickets for this one, the first real ‘event’ piece of the Festival. The RSC Touring Company, currently travelling with Greg Doran’s production of ‘The Canterbury Tales’, stopped off for one afternoon in Stratford to do this, a special event called ‘Sharing Sources’. Eh? Well, ‘The…