Shakespeare
Speech impediment
Who goes to big-screen Shakespeare? Not theatre-goers much, and with reason. Apart from the odd corker by Kurosawa, arguably Olivier…
Come rain or shine
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
Nice work
You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of…
All white on the night
Trevor Nunn is staging Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses without a single black actor. So what, says Robert Gore-Langton
Art by committee
Australia, 1788. A transport ship arrives in Port Jackson (later Sydney harbour) carrying hundreds of convicts and a detachment of…
Another near run thing
Charles VI of France died on 21 October 1422. He had been intermittently mad for most of his long reign,…
Rio’s rococo genius
The surname is pronounced ‘M’shahdo j’Asseece’. There are also two Christian names — Joaquim Maria — which are usually dispensed…
Family matters
God, what a title. The Gathered Leaves. It sounds like a tremulous weepie about grief and endurance with a closing…
Salieri’s revenge
Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned…
Tax return
Make no mistake: the Proms, whose 2015 season was launched last night, would not, could not, exist without the BBC,…
Shaw hand
When is a rape not a rape? It’s an unsettling question — far more so than anything offered up by…
Home and away
Refugee crisis in the Mediterranean! Fear not. Anders Lustgarten and his trusty rescue ship are here to save mankind. Lampedusa…
Swords of honour
Earlier this century I was a guest at a fine dinner, held in a citadel of aristocratic Catholicism, for youngish…
Hard reign
King John arrives at the Globe bent double under the weight of garlands from the London critics. Their jaunt up…
Portrait of the week
Home The annual rate of inflation turned negative in April, for the first time since 1960, with deflation of 0.1…
Four play
If Julian, Dick, George and Anne had become terrorists they’d have called themselves The Angry Brigade. It’s such a Wendy…
Shakespeare’s duds
I love Shakespeare. But when he pulls on his wellies and hikes into the forest I yearn for the exit.…
Sher force of character
Understandably given its bulk, Antony Sher’s Falstaff in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays…
All things to all men
What did St George do? Killed a dragon, as everyone knows. And yet, as Samantha Riches points out, no mention…
Stage fright
The smash hit Matilda, based on a Roald Dahl story, has spawned a copycat effort, The Twits. Charm, sweetness and…
Wife swap
My impression that Bach has come to rival Shakespeare as a flawless reference point in the cultural life of the…
Existential threat
In the endless game of word association that governs vocabulary, the current favourite as a partner of existential is threat.…
A London Christmas
I have been having my vault done over. Not, as you might think, the family strong room, but the place…
Brave, drunken, violent and law-abiding
Here is a stupendous achievement: a narrative history of England which is both thorough and arresting. Very few writers could…
Girls aloud
The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine…
