Shakespeare
Eddie Izzard’s one-man Hamlet deserves top marks
Every Hamlet is a failure. It always feels that way because playgoers tend to compare what they’re seeing with a…
The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown
Elizabeth I’s refusal to name an heir resulted in many claimants to the English throne in 1603 – with the son of the Queen of Scots finally prevailing
Amazingly sloppy: Romeo & Juliet, at Duke of York’s Theatre, reviewed
Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare with power cuts. The lighting in Jamie Lloyd’s cheerless production keeps shutting down, perhaps deliberately.…
Player Kings proves that Shakespeare can be funny
Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic…
My letter from Chris Packham
I do not know Chris Packham, the BBC nature broadcaster, personally, but he wrote me a letter last month, enclosing…
If only Caryl Churchill’s plays were as thrillingly macabre as her debut
The first play by the pioneering feminist Caryl Churchill has been revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Owners, originally staged…
Immaterial world
VR ‘immersion’ is everywhere in London this autumn, but is it of any value? Stuart Jeffries takes the plunge
Weird and wonderful
A puzzle at Hampstead Theatre. Literally, a brain teaser. Its new production, Re-member Me, is a one-man show written and…
Author’s Notebook
I began the week in Miami, looking forward to what a friend of mine describes as ‘the finest sight in…
All the world’s a stage
A neglected little town in Merseyside is the natural home for Shakespeare North, says Robert Gore-Langton
All that jazz
Simon Godwin’s Much Ado About Nothing is set in a steamy Italian holiday resort, the Hotel Messina, in the 1920s.…
Witchy women
I would guess that contemporary pagans have a love-hate relationship with Ronald Hutton. With books such as The Triumph of…
Plato the censor
The Globe theatre’s project to ‘decolonise’ Shakespeare, as if that would make plays like The Tempest ‘acceptable’ to them and…
Too much bawl and shriek
Yaël Farber’s Macbeth sets out to be a great work of art. The director crams the Almeida’s stage with suggestive…
Simply Shakespeare
Here goes. The Young Vic’s Hamlet, directed by Greg Hersov, is a triumph. This is a pared-back, plain-speaking version done…
Letters
How to stay safe Sir: Mary Wakefield is correct to highlight the opprobrium heaped on anyone who suggests sensible safety…
A world full of noises
The world Ruth Ozeki creates in The Book of Form & Emptiness resembles one of the snow globes that pop…
Problematic
‘This crossword is problematic!’ exclaimed my husband, tossing aside the folded newspaper marked with a ring where his whisky glass…
West End pearl
The newly renovated Theatre Royal Drury Lane has seen it all and staged it all, says Robert Gore-Langton
Tasteless muddle
What shall we destroy next? Romeo & Julietseems a promising target and the Globe has set out to vandalise Shakespeare’s…
Colour and confusion
Back to the Globe after more than a year. The theatre has zealously maintained its pre–Covid staffing levels. On press…
Reading between the lines
Scarcely a day passes without a major British institution announcing it is ‘decolonising’ itself. Most recently it was the turn…
