| |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
The Merchant of Venice
Peter Holland
 ' You ask why I love The Merchant of Venice. But I don't think I do love the play! As a Jewish Shakespeare scholar, I have long been intrigued by the play, worried by it, sometimes offended by productions of it, always engaged with it. It's dark, disturbing and demanding - very much not the joyous play that I first saw on stage. Oh, and the first time I ever went backstage after a Shakespeare production was to meet Peter O'Toole when he played Shylock at Stratford, many years ago!’
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Catherine Richardson
 ' The Merry Wives of Windsor is as close as Shakespeare gets to the subject of soap opera. He's not writing about the difficulties of ruling a country, or the agonies of love in an Italian setting in this play. Instead, he's writing about ordinary Elizabethans going about their daily lives in a recognisably English setting. Well, sort of. Like soap opera, this is Windsor faster, funnier and with many more plot twists than the town's sixteenth-century inhabitants would have recognised. In the course of finding a husband for the young Anne Page, there is a duel that never takes place, a man hidden in a closet, stolen horses, stolen brides who turn out to be 'lubberly boys' and, of course, a fat old knight who is shoehorned into a basket of filthy linen and laundered, and then dressed up as a witch and violently beaten. So, again like soap opera, this domestic life is full of passionate emotion and the frequent threat and occasional realisation of violence.
I first saw this play from underneath a blanket in the open air - a knockabout and pretty silly production in the thickly wooded garden of a stately home in Kent. There was a large and rather unstable set which represented two storeys of someone's idea of an Elizabethan house - lots of half timbering and 'thick oak doors' made of chipboard. But as the last act came to an end and the light in the garden faded almost to nothing, the small masked children who had been tormenting Falstaff ran into the audience. They shone candles threateningly close to our faces and let out high-pitched screams. Against all the odds it was probably the most genuinely frighteningly theatrical experience I've ever had. And that's the power of this play - it shows the uncomfortably strong energies which circulate in every community.’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Helen Hackett
' I love the play because of the way it weaves together love, laughter,
magic, dreams, and the imagination, in such a way as to entrance everyone
from children to scholars.’
Othello
Tom McAlindon
' It has always seemed to me that there is something both magical and
terrible about Othello: with scenes and language of spellbinding power, it subjects us to the combined intensities of love, hate, and despair in a way unmatched by any other work of literature.’
Richard III
Michael Taylor
 ' What opened my eyes to the magnificence of Richard III was Laurence Olivier's film version in 1955. Thanks to the wonders of video we can still see Olivier in all his strutting glory. How exciting the role of Richard is can be sampled (on the same night perhaps) by another wonderful version on film, Ian McKellen's in 1995.’
Romeo and Juliet
Adrian Poole
'For me it’s not just the doomed young lovers who bring Romeo and Juliet so vividly to life, but Mercutio, the Nurse, the Capulets, Friar Laurence. It’s the whole dense intricate breathing world of Verona that always draws me back to the play.’
|
| < previous 1 2 3 next > |
|
|
|
