Sunday, July 8, 2012
How do you stage one of Shakespeare's most problematic plays? The Merchant of Venice may have a whiff of antisemitism, but it also has layers of ambiguity; The Taming of Shrew, on the other …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:05AM[SHARE]Thursday, July 5, 2012
A link to my theatre blog piece for the Guardian yesterday. The headline was written by someone else. I'm griping about productions of Shakespeare, not Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw and everyone else.
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:48AM[SHARE]Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Whatever happened to lunchtime theatre? Is it dead and buried, just like the traditional lunchbreak? It seems to be in terminal decline in London, a victim of a world in which people have to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:56PM[SHARE]Is there a scientific basis for coincidence? I have absolutely no idea. In fact since passing my O level physics in 1964 I have struggled to understand science. I once found myself on a plan…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:40AM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Another very disappointing evening at the Roundhouse, following Twelfth Night a few days ago. All I can say about David Farr's over-designed and under-acted production is that the phrase 'Sh…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:27AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 16, 2012
It must be a fairly rare event for a first play by an unknown writer to get its premiere not in the Cottesloe but in the National Theatre's much larger Lyttelton. But director Howard Davies'…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:15AM[SHARE]Thursday, June 14, 2012
Two years ago Shakespeare's Globe delivered a cracking production of Henry IV, with Jamie Parker playing the young Hal opposite Roger Allam's Olivier-winning Falstaff. Now Parker moves on to…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:30AM[SHARE]I have a modest 'back to basics' proposal for the Royal Shakespeare Company's new boss Greg Doran: despatch all the company's set and costume designers, composers, technical panjandrums and …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 09:41AM[SHARE]Saturday, June 2, 2012
Ah well, you can't win them all. The Globe's magnificent worldwide Shakespeare season is coming to an end with a real stinker. I do not think I have ever seen a version of Shakespeare as bad…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 01:01PM[SHARE]Director Polly Findlay told the NT Platform audience before last night's performance of Antigone that she was hoping to recreate the atmosphere of an HBO television drama, using the Olivier'…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:30AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Perhaps it was the offer from the blog-friendly Almeida theatre of a free ticket and a glass of white wine; or perhaps it was the bikini-clad young woman on the poster which drew me to see M…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:23AM[SHARE]Saturday, May 19, 2012
I've just watched Off By Heart, a really stimulating BBC2 programme about nine talented teenagers acting their socks off at the RSC in Stratford with soliloquies from Romeo and Juliet, Henry…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:10PM[SHARE]Friday, May 18, 2012
Yes, it was charming. That's not an adjective I often use in the theatre, and it's probably inadequate to explain the appeal of this highly sophisticated Georgian production at Shakespeare's…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:35PM[SHARE]After being electrified by Andrew Hilton's Bristol-based company's production of Richard II last year, I jumped at the chance to see their well-reviewed production of Chekhov's last play on …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:34AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 10, 2012
Imagine an African duo with the comic skills of The Two Ronnies or Morecambe and Wise taking on Shakespeare, and you will get some idea of how funny this production is. Denton Chikura and To…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:25AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Anal rape, blowjobs, fright wigs, bare bums, cocaine snorting, pill popping, vodka swilling and witches miming to 'I will survive'. This production of Macbeth had everything schoolchildren l…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:02AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 3, 2012
It's not just the recession that makes me combine the three plays I saw yesterday in one post. It would be hard to find a greater contrast between the joyous freewheeling style of actors fro…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:24AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 28, 2012
Going with my wife to see Mike Bartlett's new play about a baby boomer couple who met at Oxford in the late 1960s when they were 19 was a strange experience. Imagine the Queen watching The K…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:32AM[SHARE]Friday, April 27, 2012
After a quarter of a century, the story of the western hostages seized in Lebanon in the 1980s has faded from popular memory. What remains is Frank McGuinness's classic play about three men …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:40AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Imagine a notoriously corrupt country where the autocrat hands over to his deputy for a period before suddenly returning to resume his place at the top. No prizes at the front of the class f…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:40PM[SHARE]Monday, April 23, 2012
Shakespeare's Globe has started its international multilingual festival with a real sizzler despite the rain. This wonderful production by the South African company that brought Carmen, The …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:48AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 21, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/apr/20/touts-pushing-theatregoers-out
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:26AM[SHARE]Friday, April 20, 2012
Summarising this show is tricky; it leaves the audience goggle-eyed, visually and aurally ravished by its theatrical imagination. A one-man show in the cavernous space of the NT's Lyttelton …
SOURCE: John Morrison at 06:45AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 19, 2012
This is an interesting revival of a play which came first out of two thousand entries in a new stage writing competition run by The Observer in 1957 and organised by Kenneth Tynan. Set in Tr…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 07:33AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 17, 2012
David Suchet is a great actor who has been nominated umpteen times for Olivier Awards Best Actor but has never actually won it. His harrowing performance in a role which Olivier himself once…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:34AM[SHARE]Friday, April 6, 2012
The Royal Court Theatre has always shone a sharp light on the English class system, ever since the days of Wesker and Osborne. Laura Wade's excellent drama Posh about the rioting upper class…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:53AM[SHARE]Thursday, April 5, 2012
I'm still in two minds about Philip Ridley after seeing his new play at Southwark Playhouse. Two weeks ago I really enjoyed the Arcola's revival of The Pitchfork Disney, somewhat against all…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 10:12AM[SHARE]Everyone with any common sense knows that Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita is exactly the kind of magical realist novel it's impossible to put on stage. Which is why Simon McBurney an…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 08:39AM[SHARE]Friday, March 30, 2012
Michael Attenborough's production of this play didn't work for me, and I'm trying to puzzle out why. There's a splendid central performance by Samantha Spiro as Filumena, the Neapolitan ex-p…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 04:31AM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Church incense wafts across the stalls and up into the circle as masked and hooded figures wearing crosses and carrying candlesticks pad their way on to the stage. Jamie Lloyd's new producti…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 05:24AM[SHARE]Wednesday, March 21, 2012
One of the best signs that a production really works is that you leave the theatre thinking the playwright is absolutely brilliant. George Farquhar, who wrote this play just over 300 years a…
SOURCE: John Morrison at 02:36PM[SHARE] 
