Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Twelfth Night

  • 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…

  • Twelfth Night (ASC) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Twelfth Night (ASC) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    ‘The knight’s in admirable fooling’, remarked Meg Rodgers’s Feste, watching as Eli Lynn’s remarkable sprightly Sir Toby held court during their nighttime revels. But on the last night of Jenny Bennett’s production of Twelfth Night, this was true of everyone. This performance was a celebration, fueled by the exuberant responses of the ASC Theatre Camp…

  • What You Will (Shakespeare Ensemble) (live-stream)

    What You Will (Shakespeare Ensemble) (live-stream)

    Of the Shakespeare events produced during lockdown, The Shakespeare Ensemble’s What You Will is one of the ones to make the most of the affordances of digital media. Eschewing entirely the need for linear narration, the original live event hosted no fewer than nine separate streams occurring simultaneously, creating a virtual promenade performance that allowed audiences to…

  • Twelfth Night (National Theatre) @ The Olivier Theatre (NT At Home)

    Twelfth Night (National Theatre) @ The Olivier Theatre (NT At Home)

    The choice of the National Theatre to broadcast Simon Godwin’s Twelfth Night to homes to mark Shakespeare’s deathday on 23 April was a canny one; a crowd-pleasing comedy, with known quantities (Oliver Chris as Orsino and the headlining Tamsin Greig as a regendered Malvolia, the actors reunited from Green Wing) and an elaborate set courtesy of Soutra Gilmour. On a personal level, having left…

  • Christmas at The (Snow) Globe @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Christmas at The (Snow) Globe @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Is it a Christmas show or a Shakespeare show? At the heart of Sandi Toksvig and Jennifer Toksvig’s joyful festive residency at the Globe lay an irreverent contestation over the space, whether reserved for ‘serious acting’ or opened up for community celebration. As a site-specific and original holiday entertainment, it spoke to the unique power of the Globe as…

  • Twelfth Night (Shanty Productions, film)

    Twelfth Night (Shanty Productions, film)

    Twelfth Night is Shanty Productions’ debut film, as well as the feature debut of director/adaptor Adam Smethurst. It’s quite a launch for an independent film company, with a truly excellent cast, fine use of the West Sussex countryside, and an effective publicity machine. And while the film betrays some awkwardness in its execution and some caution in…

  • Twelfth Night (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

    Twelfth Night (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

    The RSC’s Christmas show, Twelfth Night, saw the creative team behind the popular Love’s Labour’s Lost/Won double bill (director Christopher Luscombe, designer Simon Higlett, composer Nigel Hess, movement director Jenny Arnold) reunite for a production that had all of the flaws and few of the redeeming features of the earlier productions. Twelfth Night had its moments, but its smug conservatism and alarmingly uncritical, fetishising…

  • Macbeth (Filter) @ Liverpool Everyman

    Macbeth (Filter) @ Liverpool Everyman

    Filter is one of my favourite theatre companies, whether for its wonderfully anarchic Shakespeare productions or for its thought-provoking new writing, so it is with no small regret that I have to confess to disappointment at Macbeth. The raw materials of Filter’s work – an exposed production of sound, musicians at the heart of action, fragmented…

  • I, Malvolio (Tim Crouch) @ Curve

    I, Malvolio (Tim Crouch) @ Curve

    I, Malvolio is one of the bravest shows I have seen in some time. How many pieces of theatre invite two young children to come on stage to hold a rope and kick out a chair while the title character prepares to hang himself? Although it carried an age warning of 11+, Tim Crouch’s one-man show challenged rather…

  • Twelfth Night @ Liverpool Everyman

    Twelfth Night @ Liverpool Everyman

    There was an awful moment in the closing night of the new Liverpool Everyman’s inaugural production of Twelfth Night, as Malvolio’s yellow stockings emerged, feet uppermost, through a trapdoor for an inverted prison sequence. The mechanism lifting the actor was misdirected, meaning that his feet pushed at the stage, which cracked and splintered before the mistake…