Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Troilus and Cressida

  • 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…

  • Troilus and Cressida (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, via RSC Live

    Troilus and Cressida (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, via RSC Live

    As a regular at Nottingham Broadway’s screenings of the Live from Stratford-upon-Avon broadcasts, it was dispiriting to see an audience barely a third of the usual size at the broadcast of the rarely-staged Troilus and Cressida; doubly so when this was one of the RSC’s most pleasingly innovative productions for some time. Following the Globe’s example…

  • Troilus and Cressida (1623 Theatre Company), online

    A fascinating experiment from my friends at 1623 Theatre began in earnest today. At the website www.unclepandarus.com, a coughing, bearded soldier is delivering daily video updates from an underground bunker. In the aftermath of a nuclear war that killed ten billion souls, fought between two rival powers over a celebrity called Helen, Pandarus is leaving messages to warn…

  • Troilus and Cressida @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    For a play that, on first publication, was described as “never stal’d with the Stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger”, Troilus and Cressida worked astonishingly well at the Globe in Matthew Dunster’s new production. Funny, moving, disquieting and exciting by turns, this consistently interesting production made the most of the play’s myriad tones and characters to…

  • Troilus and Cressida (Cheek by Jowl) @ The Barbican Theatre

    Cheek by Jowl’s new English-language production, Troilus and Cressida, seems to be one of those that is already polarising people. In just the day and a half since I saw it I’ve already heard from people who loved it and others who loathed it, and the reviews ranged from Michael Billington’s 4-star praise in the Guardian to John Peter’s…

  • Troilus and Cressida (RSC/Edinburgh International Festival) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

    Firstly, thanks to the Edinburgh International Festival, there is a whole website of production photographs for this play, far too many to show here- you can see more at http://www.eif.co.uk/galleries/tandc2/?PHPSESSID=4c62742405b330dd95ccaedd678327a8 . This was, as you can tell from the pictures, a production that aspired to the epic. From the pre-recorded and lavish music to the enormous walled…