The good news about this Old Vic production of The Tempest is that the cast had less of a problem with the declamation; if the way the words were spoken didn’t give them new meaning for the audience, they did not hamper the general sense either. The other piece of good news is that Sam Mendes’ direction is as strong here as it was for As You Like It. In moments it is quite brilliant and clearly demonstrates that his rise to Hollywood A-list director was no fluke…

Caliban has been performed in many ways onstage: a woman, a punk rocker, a Rastafarian, a Millwall fan, and a practically naked predator carrying a large phallic bone that offended one member of staff so much that it caused them to resign. When Miranda sets her eyes on Ferdinand, the third man she has ever seen, she instantly falls in love with him. Prospero protests, “this is a Caliban”, a similarity that is obvious throughout the story but has yet to be fully realised onstage. Until now…

If you are a Shakespeare geek, a student of Shakespeare, or are studying the Renaissance literary period, you may have been aware of a theatrical curio which has, this very night, finished its short run at Southwark’s Union Theatre. The curio in question? Double Falsehood, a play which may or may not be partly by Shakespeare that was recently redeemed from academic purgatory by the publishers Arden, who commissioned Nottingham University scholar (and modern day Lewis Theobald) Brean Hammond to lead the heavily bastardized manuscript into the…

Creation Theatre have uncovered a previously unknown Shakespearean comedy, Romeo and Juliet. The love story is played for laughs; for example as the famous balcony scene begins, Romeo pulls a series of funny faces, dashes backwards and forwards, and has the audience laughing out loud. This is a fun, delightful, and original take on the story…

In Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford, Simon Callow continues his tradition of one-man plays on the subject of writers. (His previous offerings were about Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens.) He explains that the play is an attempt to present an ‘echo chamber’ of both the life of Shakespeare and the times in which he lived and wrote…

Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most dramatic stories in history and literature, so it should come as no surprise that before the premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s show things took a dramatic turn…

British summertime is not summertime without an outdoor Shakespearean comedy with a cosy blanket, white wine, and, ahem, rain. Shakespeare’s Globe on tour brings A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Oxford and its four-hundred-year-old quadrangle inside the Bodleian library. On the opening night, which began with drizzle, the company put on a performance that shone through the rain and was just as stunning as its surroundings…

It has been said that comedy is tragedy averted, and the dark atmosphere and staging that pervade the first half of the current Bridge Project production of As You Like It appear to be heavily influenced by the melancholic Jaques long before he makes his first appearance. The dismal sparsely lit stage is framed by two tall spindly trees that have no leaves upon them, and this setting doubles both for the usurping Duke Frederick’s court, as well as for his usurped brother’s woodland home…

Eureka! I have it – I’ve worked out what’s wrong with the Sam Mendes-directed As You Like It which is currently playing to packed houses at The Old Vic. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to work it out because, on the surface, there is nothing especially wrong with this production, which features the first of two Shakespeare plays being staged as part of this year’s Bridge project (itself in its second of three planned years)…

It’s a computer game based on Hamlet. For the majority of folks reading this, that’s probably all I need say. For the rest of you non-frothing-Shakespeare-o-philes, what if I tack on “point ‘n click adventure,” “clever, challenging puzzles,” and “zanny, funny, indie style?” Not enough? Ugh! Fraility, thy name is blog-reader!