Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Gregory Doran Reviewer: Sam Lowe Measure for Measure is an interesting case study for a Shakespeare play. It’s known for not really fitting agreeably into either genre box of comedy (meaning it possesses a happy ending) or tragedy. Shakespeare’s plays can be divided into the following: Tragedy, History, or Comedy. Some academics have even referred to ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Eleanor Rhode Reviewer: Katie Burchett Neon lights, foam hands and political sparring in a boxing ring; Eleanor Rhode brings Shakespeare’s unsung King John to the Swan Theatre in an explosion of visual splendour. It is a rare thing to go into a Shakespeare play with no preconceived ideas of how it’ll be done, but from the ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Kimberley Sykes Reviewer: Dave Cunningham Director Kimberley Sykes uses the current production of As You Like It to examine whether, as is opined in the play, the world really is a stage.  The show opens in what might be considered the traditional manner- a bleak monochrome court from which the increasingly paranoid Duke has banished many ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Christopher Haydon Reviewer: May Mellstrom Shakespeare's murderous tale of power, greed and ambition is reinvented in Christopher Haydon's Macbeth, notable for the casting of a woman in the title role and therefore offering a fresh perspective on an oft-performed play.  With war raging it is Lucy Ellinson's Macbeth who emerges victorious from the battleground; hailed as ...

Director: Elizabeth Freestone Conductor: Helen Harrison Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Northern Opera Group is never afraid to take on the unusual in its pleasingly varied small-scale festival, the Leeds Opera Festival. This year the theme was Shakespeare, but not in anything like a predictable way. The major production, Stanford’s Much Ado about Nothing, while short of a masterpiece, was certainly ...

Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford Libretto: Julian Sturgis (after Shakespeare) Director: David Ward Conductor: Christopher Pelly Reviewer: Ron Simpson The Northern Opera Group deserves enormous credit for giving two performances of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Much Ado about Nothing as the major work in its imaginative five-day Leeds Opera Festival, themed around Shakespeare in opera. There has probably been only one professional ...

Writer/Director: Elvi Piper Designer: Antony Jones Musical Director: Rosie Fox Reviewer: Ron Simpson This year the Shakespeare’s Rose season in the shadow of Clifford’s Tower is mounting a commendably full-on Shakespearean assault on the people of York. Four plays rotate on a basis of two performances a day, during term-time some of the day-time performances were aimed specifically at schools, ...

Writer: William Shakespeare Director: Loveday Ingram Reviewer: Abbie Rippon Set in the beautiful Grosvenor Park, Chester’s Open Air Theatre celebrates its 10th birthday this year with a trio of plays: Twelfth Night, The Borrowers and, of course, Henry V. This story of war, allegiance and identity remains as universal and relevant now as it was to the Elizabethans watching it at ...