RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date
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Word perfect
GORDON PARSONS wonders at a near perfect production of Shakespeare’s eloquent fairytale
Cat White (Helen), Conor Glean (Cloten), Marcia Lecky (Dorothy), Peter De Jersey (Cymbeline) and Alexandra Gilbreath (The Queen)
[Ellie Kurttz]
KATARZYNA KOSMALA introduces a retrospective by one of the most significant figures in contemporary US photography
MAYER WAKEFIELD is entertained but let down by an audacious production that, sadly, doesn't ring true
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by drama that, despite accomplished performances, cannot overcome an unfocused script
New releases from Sam Carter, Spell Songs and Les Thomas
Cymbeline
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
MODERN directors of Shakespeare often appear to start with the question, what do we want or, at best, encourage the play to say? To be fair many of his plays lend themselves to this drive for “interpretation”.
For his return to the theatre he has worked at for 30 years and the company he has led since 2012, the grandly named artistic director emeritus, Greg Doran, has recalled one of the central tenets of the RSC’s founders.
When Peter Hall and John Barton established what was to become a leading world theatre company in 1960, they centred their work on the language of the plays. The actors must not only pursue a surgical analysis of linguistic meaning but understand that the communication of the plays lay in the shape and rhythm of the blank verse.
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