Category Archives: Shakespeare on Stage

Jeremy Irons and Shakespeare

Jeremy Irons is one of our most distinctive and charismatic actors, who has distinguished himself in a whole range of films and TV series. In recent years he’s helped to bring new audiences to Shakespeare with his depiction of Henry … Continue reading

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W B Yeats and Stratford-upon-Avon

For the Spring Festival in April 1901 in Stratford-upon-Avon F R Benson put on a cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays that quickly became known as the Week of Kings. England’s turbulent history must have been a subject of great interest … Continue reading

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Remembering Sir Laurence Olivier

Friday 11 July 2014 is the 25th anniversary of Laurence Olivier’s death in 1989. By chance I was in the RST that evening and before the performance artistic director Terry Hands delivered an onstage tribute to Olivier. At the end … Continue reading

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Outdoor Shakespeare

This weekend just gone has been a great one for outside events: Wimbledon, the Tour de France in Yorkshire, and in Stratford the now-annual River Festival. Amazingly, the sun shone on them all. The Guardian recently published an article about … Continue reading

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Shakespeare, performance, emotion and memory

This week I have been attending the British Shakespeare Association’s conference at the University of Stirling. What follows is the text of my paper: The idea for my project Listening to the Audience began when, at an international Shakespeare conference … Continue reading

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Kenneth Branagh: from Henry V to Macbeth

Now for a treat: a whole hour of video of Kenneth Branagh, Alex Kingston and Rob Ashford discussing with US journalist Charlie Rose the production of Macbeth which has been playing at the Park Avenue Armoury in New York. The … Continue reading

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Remembering Buzz Goodbody at The Other Place

This week the Royal Shakespeare Company has been celebrating the opening of what is being called The Other Place at the Courtyard Theatre, a temporary re-imagining of the studio theatre which was once called “the most productive tin hut in … Continue reading

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Great Shakespeare performances: David Garrick’s Richard III

Few dates in the history of Shakespeare on stage are as significant at 19 October 1741. Then the young David Garrick (billed as “A gentlemen who never appeared on any stage”) performed the part of Richard III at Goodman’s Fields … Continue reading

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Shakespeare’s vision of apocalypse: King Lear at the National Theatre

As I write this on the afternoon of 6 June the celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy are taking place. President Hollande, speaking into a microphone, has been talking about peace in Europe, in front … Continue reading

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Shakespeare across the gender boundaries

There’s lots going on just now with all-female and cross-gender productions of Shakespeare, so this post is a quick round-up. Following their success with an all-female Julius Caesar directed by Phyllida Lloyd, the Donmar Warehouse recently announced they will be … Continue reading

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