I went to the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury at the weekend; my first visit inside the city’s new theatre. There has long been a Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury – I first went there in the early 1970s to see an Agatha Christie play, when the theatre was on St Margaret’s Street. Then it was rebuiltRead More
Category: Shakespeare
Being there
Until now, I’d not been to one of the live video broadcasts into cinemas of theatre productions which have spread so rapidly since the New York Metropolitan Opera introduced them in late 2006. In part this was me being slow off the mark, in part it was apprehension at what I was buying into. Simply,Read More
Brief lives
I have begun writing the lives of two people. I have been given 1,000 words in which to encapsulate the achievements, character and significance of two filmmakers, George Pearson and Albert E. Smith. It’s a commission from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for which I have written several such short biographies already, on ArthurRead More
God save the King
King Charles III is one of the best modern plays I have seen. I’ve certainly not seen enough modern plays to make an authoritative judgement as to its quality, but I found play and production – running at London’s Almeida Theatre until the end of May 2014 – outstanding. The play is by Mike Bartlett,Read More
Staging the world
But els in deep of night when drowsines Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens harmony, That sit upon the nine enfolded Sphears … John Milton, ‘Arcades’ (1634) I spent a great three hours yesterday afternoon at the British Museum’s exhibition Shakespeare: Staging the World. It’s been their blockbuster CulturalRead More
Shakespeare’s other screens
Blogs are addictive things. I’ve set up some five or six over the past few years, not to give my petty views of the world but instead devoted to individual subjects where I could report on research discoveries. A couple did quite well – The Bioscope provided information on early and silent cinema and wasRead More