To the Arcola Theatre in Hackney to see Tamburlaine, a play I’d not seen staged before (two plays, to be precise, since Christopher Marlowe wrote a sequel after part one had been a success). Studio 2 at the Arcola is a brick-walled basement that in other circumstances might have served well enough as a doubleRead More
I’ve just launched a new website. It’s called Theatregoing, and it’s a companion to my Picturegoing site. The subject of Picturegoing is eyewitness accounts of going to see pictures. The subject of Theatregoing is eyewitness accounts of going to see a show. The aim of Theatregoing is to document the experience of going to theRead More
To Stratford, courtesy of Gravesend last night, seeing a live broadcast of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest close to home and in relative comfort (alas the theatre designed with sufficient consideration to fit my legs has yet to be built). The production has generated much interest because of the use of itsRead More
To the Almeida Theatre in London to see Mary Stuart. I’d not seen or read anything by Frederich Schiller before now (beyond those words for Beethoven’s 9th, of course), but on the strength of this gripping piece of theatre I am going to have to find out more. Schiller’s 1800 play tells of the finalRead More
One of the most notorious of all film credits is that alleged for The Taming of the Shrew (USA 1929): “additional dialogue by Sam Taylor”. Sadly the credit line is a myth – certainly it’s not appeared on any print that I’ve seen – but it’s the gag that counts. It was the absurdity ofRead More
The former Labour MP Chris Mullin has published an autobiography called Hinterland. Its title comes from the argument, regularly made, that politicians ought to have a background beyond politics, to broaden their view of life. I don’t think it can be proven that having a rich back story inevitably makes you better at politics, norRead More
What is the connection between Balzac’s The History of the Thirteen, Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, and Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound? Answer – there isn’t one. Or rather there is, in that all three are specifically referenced by Jacques Rivette’s improvisational epic set of films, Out 1 (1971), but whose chief purpose might beRead More
It’s all Shakespeare at the moment; inevitable, I guess. And so to the Cockpit Theatre in London, a community theatre tucked away off Lissom Grove, to see a Hamlet that we seldom see – the ‘bad quarto’ Hamlet. There are three different surviving versions of Shakespeare’s play, much to the confusion and secret joy ofRead More
Judi Dench played Barbara in Major Barbara (1962) with Edward Woodward who played Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (1971) with Jenny Agutter who played in Hedvig Ekdal in The Wild Duck (1971) with Denholm Elliott who played Alan Quine in Donkey’s Years (1980) with Penelope Keith who played Amanda Prynne in Private Lives (1976) withRead More
It may be hard to say for certain, but I don’t know that there has ever been a better title for a book than Too Naked for the Nazis. It’s the title of a biography by Alan Stafford of the legendary variety trio Wilson, Keppel and Betty, and derives from an apparently genuine reaction byRead More