Kate Maltby writes about the intersection of culture, politics and history. She is a theatre critic for The Times and is conducting academic research on the intellectual life of Elizabeth I.
From 18th Century Shakespearian pretenders to the new establishment, if you find yourself looking for an artistic respite from sports overload at the Olympic Games, there will be few more exciting places to be in 2012 than Shakespeare’s Globe. In the spirit of Olympic internationalism, the Globe will be inviting 38 different companies from around
Plaster the name ‘William Shakespeare’ on your theatre posters, and you’re sure to get bums on seats – even if Shakespeare didn’t quite write the play in question. That’s the rationale behind the slew of productions of the mysterious Cardenio, or Double Falsehood, the latest of which has opened at the Union Theatre.
For a writer who died in 1936, Pirandello still feels remarkably contemporary. In the short plays, like the newly revived The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, he hones in on emerging details of the twentieth century experience which still pattern our lives today. A woman narrowly misses the sliding doors of a
For ten years, Tennessee Williams poured his soul into The Two-Character Play. It was the longest he ever spent working on one play and it would prove to be his most overtly personal expression. The Two-Character Play is the story of a hopeless brother and sister – she riddled with substance abuse and delusions, he
Riverside Studios stills owes much of its reputation as one of London’s most daring powerhouses of fringe theatre to Peter Gill. As its founding Artistic Director, Gill inaugurated the Riverside tradition of high-risk commissions from young, experimental troupes alongside the latest international innovators. So now that Gill has entered his eighth decade still a major
It’s November 1938 and Sylvia, a paranoid Jewish woman in Brooklyn, is struck by hysterical paralysis. But what’s really constricting her: fear of Germany’s Nazis or fear of her husband at home? There’s something crude and jagged about Arthur Miller’s late play, Broken Glass, but in the Tricycle Theatre’s new production, it’s given a
Boiling Frogs is an angry, important play. Set entirely in the mirrored cell of a police station, it hints at an Orwellian Britain in which civil liberties have been all but wiped away, by a State desperate to exert control over escalating terrorism, natural disasters and the rising heat. Unsurprisingly, this is a vision of
The trouble with the Old Vic’s revival of Noel Coward’s play about Bright Young Things is that while the three principals are certainly Young, and may be rather ambiguous Things, there is very little that’s Bright about them whatsoever. Gilda, a wealthy but bohemian interior decorator, cannot decide whether she is more in love
The announcement, yesterday, of Nick Boles’ proposal for a Lib-Con electoral pact conveniently coincided with the opening of an election court hearing into a particularly unpleasant battle between former Labour minister Phil Woolas and his Lib Dem opponent, Councillor Elwyn Watkins. The most serious allegations against Mr Woolas, who won the seat with a 103
The Southbank has always been an anarchic place. Shakespeare’s Globe proudly reminds visitors that Elizabethan theatres were considered far too lawless – and, implicitly, too much fun – to be licensed within the city limits. After years of rubbing shoulders with gamblers, pimps, and bear-baiters, by 1815 most theatres had advanced to the semi-respectability
When was the last time you shuddered in the stalls as a deathly thriller played out on stage? It’s a long time since the heyday of the West End whodunnit, when audiences piled tight into theatres only to better leap from their seats and squeal each time Death struck again. The world expert on modern
There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be Another Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary. There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be
Philip Glass doesn’t approve of intervals. Last week, at Yale University’s Sprague Memorial Hall, the prolific composer gave a preview of what audiences in Dublin, Edinburgh and Cork could expect from his piano performances a few days later. He starts by declaring that pauses in performance “damage the concentration” – and he ended it in
Spare a thought for poor Theresa May. Judging by the reaction so far, she now faces the unenviable task of shouldering almost everyone’s preconceptions about Tory women in government – with Caroline Spelman, Baroness Warsi and the lower-profile Cheryl Gillan for back-up. She will no doubt continue to disappoint feminists and irritate reactionaries, and she
