Saturday, January 12, 2019
And suddenly, there are newspapers again: between Saturday and Sunday, most — all? — of the occupied buildings were stormed, dozens of protesters killed in process, hundreds arr…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:03PMFriday, January 11, 2019
This was the weekend when the government abandoned all negotiations with the striking and occupying protesters and turned to outright violence: by Sunday, all occupied buildings had been sto…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:45PMIt seems as though there was less outright street fighting this day, more a tense atmosphere of expectation — the occupants held firm but were awaiting an attack by government troops. …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:27AMWednesday, January 9, 2019
Negotiations between the government and the protesters are failing. The government has issued a call to arms, offering payment to citizens willing to join defence corps and “protect th…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:43PMThe situation in Berlin remained chaotic: the police had ceased to operate, armed units of government forces and of revolutionaries could be seen all over the city, and public transport had …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 12:41AMMonday, January 7, 2019
Berlin remained in turmoil: the editorial in the morning edition of the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung called it “open war of citizens against citizens” and describes the scene: R…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:52PMSunday, January 6, 2019
Not a great day to start this! 6 January 1919 was the day after the beginning of the uprising that became known (inaccurately) as the Spartacist Revolt (the English Wikipedia entry is not…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:38PMThis is a new project — let’s see how long I can keep it going. I will try to post every day about the theatrical offerings on stage in Berlin on this date a hundred years ago. I…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:06PMFriday, January 4, 2019
I’m now completely immersed in the work on my book on Shakespeare in Berlin in the last 100 years. In particular, I’m currently digging as deep as I can into the Weimar Republic …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:32PMMonday, December 31, 2018
I have been thinking quite a bit about the problem of theatrical space lately. Open any survey of theatre history, and you are likely to find a fairly standardized account of how the spaces…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:18AMFriday, November 16, 2018
The pitch for Josie Rourke’s Measure for Measure at the Donmar, as I had understood it, was that half-way through the show, Isabella and Angelo – or rather, Hayley Atwell and Jack Lowden…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 10:57AMThursday, October 25, 2018
This is not a review of The Wolves, though if I were writing such a review, I’d urge you all to snap up the last few remaining tickets for the production of Sarah DeLappe’s play, directe…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:54AMMonday, March 12, 2018
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on here about the distant past — it’s been a while since I’ve written anything on here at all! — but because…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:38AMMonday, February 12, 2018
[This text has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form in Theatre Survey 59.2 (May 2018) (published by Cambridge University Press); copyright (c) 2018, American So…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 10:58AMWednesday, January 3, 2018
Rehearsal halls have to be, by definition, safe spaces. They have to be places where people can be as vulnerable as necessary, as open as they need to be, as free of inhibitions, as daring, …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 11:52PMMonday, July 31, 2017
Just some thoughts and responses, very much off-the-cuff, written right after I saw the show and only lightly edited: 1) I do not and will never understand the Anglo-American approach to “…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:20PMSaturday, May 20, 2017
Almost two years ago, the Berlin government announced that Frank Castorf’s contract as the artistic director of the Volksbühne would not be renewed after the end of his current ter…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:53PMSunday, May 7, 2017
When Simon Stone “overwrote” Lorca’s Yerma at the Young Vic last year, I was impressed — partly because he did so on a set that toyed with the apparent naturalism of …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:49PMSaturday, March 25, 2017
I saw Ivo van Hove’s Roman Tragedies on Sunday. There is no doubt that the work is a significant achievement, an evening of towering ambition and awe-inspiring commitment, a display of an …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 06:27PMTuesday, March 21, 2017
Robert Icke’s Hamlet is so absolutely stacked with ideas and original takes that someone could produce an annotated edition of the play based on it. After a single viewing, I have almo…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 09:59PMFriday, November 4, 2016
So. It’s been over a week since the Emma Rice debacle at the Globe hit the headlines. My first response was anger and disbelief, and obviously, as is my won’t, I was ready to blo…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:00PMThursday, October 20, 2016
One might say that Nicolas Stemann doesn’t so much stage The Merchant of Venice as interrogate the play – or the very possibility of staging it now. That would only capture part of what …
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 01:29PMWednesday, September 21, 2016
A brief outburst, prompted by nothing in particular. Well, that’s lie. Prompted by this experience: I found myself walking into the Tom Patterson Theatre at Stratford in a crowd of tee…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:30PMFriday, September 16, 2016
From my Northern perch, I’ve been following the US election rather obsessively. From a partisan angle? Of course. If the orange monster gets elected, he will not just wreck his own cou…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:13PMThis is really quick and dirty and off the cuff… Carly Maga’s excellent review in the Toronto Star (wow, it feels nice to be able to use “excellent review” and “…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 03:16AMSaturday, August 13, 2016
It was the worst of theatre, it was the best of theatre. This cycle of Chekhov’s first three plays (Platonov — heavily edited and adapted; Ivanov; and The Seagull), in new “…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 02:04PMI’ve spent a good deal of time and energy writing about why Brian Vickers’s The One King Lear is such a terribly misguided book — both in an almost endless string of tweets…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 08:13AMSunday, August 7, 2016
I wasn’t too impressed with Maria Aberg’s production of Webster’s The White Devil at the RSC two years ago, and I went into this Faustus expecting more of the same: a moder…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 10:55PMFriday, August 5, 2016
A quick one, in between shows: Compared to the theatre I’ve seen in London over the past two or three years, the four shows I saw in Stratford this week have been seriously, depressing…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 07:47AMMonday, August 1, 2016
This will be short. You walk into the Swan. It might as well be the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. There’s smoke in the air and lots of candles, and soon a bunch of people in Jacobean outfit…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 08:47PMI’ll be seeing a lot of theatre over the next two weeks, and I’m badly out of practice in writing about shows — it’s been almost a year since I last did a proper revi…
SOURCE: www.dispositio.net at 12:09PM 
