???

[tempestsarekind]

Emma Rice is doing The Taming of the Shrew in her first season at the Globe:

Featuring an all Irish company, the production marks the centenary of the Easter Rising by revisiting 1916 Ireland and remembering the role of women in the fight for independence. Encapsulating the rebellious spirit, Katherine will be played by Kathy Rose O’Brien, and

Comments

[a_t_rain]

WTF?! I'm pretty sure that if you were to list all of Shakespeare's plays in the order of their appropriateness for commemorating the Easter Rising, The Taming of the Shrew would ... make it into the top thirty, at most.

ETA: Also, the more I think about it, Shakespeare wrote pretty much the perfect play to commemorate the Easter Rising -- viz., Julius Caesar, which is actually ABOUT doomed idealist freedom fighters being all self-consciously poetic and martyr-y. Granted, you would have to actually read some Shakespeare to figure that out, and I'm not sure Emma Rice ever does...

[negothick]

They're marketing it as a "Wonder Season," and this announcement certainly makes me wonder about the Globe's choice of director.

[tempestsarekind]

you would have to actually read some Shakespeare to figure that out, and I'm not sure Emma Rice ever does…

This is the thing I come back to, every time another piece of information about the "Wonder Season" comes out, or someone quotes her in another article or interview! She doesn't actually seem to have read the plays she's chosen to put on, or any others. (I read something somewhere that suggested she once said that she hadn't ever been able to read a Shakespeare play all the way through, but I think it might have been the Guardian letters page or something, so I am hoping that the author of that letter was just misremembering!)

[tempestsarekind]

I didn't find anything that said Emma Rice had never read a Shakespeare play, but I did come across this article that included the following: "Previous attempts to read the plays, she confessed, left her “very sleepy” and tempted to switch on The Archers."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/actors/emma-rice-a-lot-of-shakespeare-feels-like-medicine/

Which is a strange thing for a director to say, since I'd assume it's important to be able to read a play and be able to see the directorial possibilities in it! I'm trying to imagine saying this about any playwright besides Shakespeare - like, "Well, trying to read Beckett made me very sleepy, but nevertheless I decided to be the artistic director for a theater devoted to Beckett anyway." ???