Swingin’ the Dream, streamed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ If a jazz retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring incredible swing music opened at a theatre near you, you would go check it out, wouldn’t you? Especially if it combined popular hits such as ‘Ain’t […]
Tag Archives | Shakespeare
Maltings’ Twelfth Night to be streamed live online
St Albans-based fringe venue The Maltings Theatre will premiere an online version of its modern music-flavoured re-working of Twelfth Night online via Zoom on 12, 13 and 14 June 2020 at 8pm. Set on a cruise liner at the height of the roaring twenties, ten actors will welcome their Zoom audience on board for a […]
Sheffield Theatres to take Shakespeare to the streets
Sheffield Theatres has announced plans to bring Shakespeare to the city’s outdoor spaces later this year as the country moves cautiously out of lockdown. With performances at the Crucible, Studio and Lyceum Theatres cancelled through to 20 July 2020 and the indoor spaces likely to remain closed for some time, the team at Sheffield Theatres […]
A History of Shakespeare in Musical Theatre
Ian Bowkett writes: The history of theatre is musical. Bronze Age lyric poets sang to a lyre. Ancient African ritual storytelling was inseparable from its music and dance. Classical Athenian theatre was backed by a chorus. Even by Shakespeare’s day, it was unusual for plays to not include at least one song. The Bard himself […]
All The Web’s A Stage – schedule announced
The full programme for tomorrow’s (Thursday 23 April 2020) Theatre Together online fundraising event All The Web’s A Stage has been announced. Featuring live performances across a variety of entertainment genres, All The Web’s A Stage will be streamed tomorrow on www.theatretogether.co.uk from midday to midnight and will include Stephen Fry reading Michael Rosen’s These […]
& Juliet – Shaftesbury Theatre
& Juliet is booking at the Shaftesbury Theatre until May 2020. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ Jukebox musicals tend to get a bad rap. And to be fair, many such constructions deserve their poor reputations: plundering an artist’s back catalogue in order to appeal to fans, often with a wafer-thin book […]
‘The whole show is a celebration of what we can do in multicultural London’: Composer James Fortune on why the National Theatre’s Pericles is pretty special
Susan Elkin writes… Composer JAMES FORTUNE – who prefers to be known as Jim to avoid confusion with the well-known American jazz musician of the same name – and I are chatting in the National Theatre’s balcony interview room. He has slipped out of Pericles rehearsals downstairs to meet me. “This Pericles is pretty special […]
Opera North’s Kiss Me, Kate to play London Coliseum in 2018
Opera North’s award-winning production of Cole Porter’s classic Kiss Me, Kate will make its debut in the capital at the London Coliseum in June next year. Bringing together top talent from the worlds of opera and the West End stage, and featuring the full-scale orchestra and chorus of Opera North, the London run of the […]
Macbeth – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – C venues
Macbeth at C venues – C (Venue 34), 6-20 August. Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩ This young company managed to win a standing ovation from its audience on this preview performance – and well-deserved, too. The setting for this Macbeth story is the contemporary music business: Cawdor and King are the names of record companies, fronted by […]
Desperate Measures – Jermyn Street Theatre
Desperate Measures continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 20 December. Star rating: one star ★ ✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ Some musical theatre composers like to set challenges for themselves, it seems. Looking for comedic material to adapt? Choose one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ that, while listed as a comedy, is altogether darker in tone. […]
Something Rotten! – St James Theatre, New York
Something Rotten! continues at the St James Theatre, New York. Star rating: 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Who would have thought that an off-hand reference to Chess – a 30-year-old musical, beloved by some but forgotten by many – would get a resounding laugh from a Broadway audience in 2015? Well, it did the other night, and […]
Shakespeare 4 Kidz presents musical version of Macbeth
The company Shakespeare 4 Kidz has begun an international tour of a new musical version of Macbeth, aimed at young audiences and families. The adaptation by Julian Chenery (who also directs) and Matt Gimblett tells the story with many of Shakespeare’s original words woven into easy-to-understand modern language. The cast includes: Noel Andrew Harron (Macbeth), Michelle Cornelius […]
