A couple of notable things for me about tonight's theatre trip: After resisting it for 12 years I finally went to see something at Shakespeare's Globe (funnily enough after booking this I figured I might as well book some other shows so I have another two lined up.) And, after Volpone, Equus and Dealer's Choice, I've finally seen professional ( Read more... )

A quick review tonight as I've had a busy week and not enough sleep; you can also take that as a disclaimer that I may be being a bit harsh on the production. Timberlake Wertenbaker's new translation of Euripides' Hippolytus is excellent - while keeping the metre and feel of Greek tragedy it also flows very naturally, best exemplified by Ann ( Read more... )

Euripides' Women of Troy is an incredibly bleak play. An attack on the particularly vicious war crimes his native Athens had recently committed in their war on Sparta, it tells the story of Troy just after it had fallen. All her sons dead, Queen Hecuba waits along with her remaining daughters and the other Trojan women to be taken to Greece into ( Read more... )

When the opening scene of a play has been described as many times as that of the new production of The Bacchae, when you finally see it it can't help but be a bit of an anticlimax. Oh well, I'll just make it worse by describing it once more: As the lights go up Alan Cumming as Dionysus is suspended upside-down by his feet, with his back to the ( Read more... )