“Who cares about Chekhov anyway? A bunch of old women moaning about ducks flying home to Moscow.” ~ Withnail [Richard E. Grant] in Withnail & I I am always grateful to the Spectrum 8 for hosting the NT Live performances; I’m also grateful that enough people in the Capital region attend them to make it…
Category: National Theatre
Frankenstein v Frankenstein
Check Todd’s blog for other featured items in Tuesday’s Overlooked A/V or add your own. It was impossible to resist the urge to see both versions of the National Theatre’s Frankenstein. Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller rotated the central roles which was fascinating in itself, never mind the rest of the new script by…
Converting Monks with Slides in San Antonio
I was hoping to have time to write up the NT Live Frankensteins I saw for Tuesday’s Overlooked A/V but I’m still working on my presentation for PCA, so it’s unlikely to happen. I did upload a version of my speech with the Powerpoint slides embedded (very hastily, so it’s a bit clunky) so they…
Review: Another Year & Fela!
In the middle of watching Mike Leigh’s Another Year, I realised why I usually dislike mimetic films. The reality they purport to capture has nothing to do with their glossy interiors and shiny surfaces. Actors — especially Hollywood actors — do not look like they do in real life without the flattering lighting, makeup and…
Review: Hamlet
I am eternally grateful for the NT Live broadcasts; they bring a little bit of the London theatre experience to the (currently) frozen north, which seems so far from the city of my heart. Thank you, Spectrum 8 for hosting the broadcasts, even if Monday night’s show seemed to have its share of technical difficulties,…
Review: A Disappearing Number and The Real Inspector Hound
The National Theatre live broadcast of A Disappearing Number proved to be a stunning experience. A heady mix of drama, math, physics, love, romance, ritual, music, classical Indian dance and rhythms — it sounds too complicated to work, but it does. In fact, it’s kind of magical. Put together by the theatre company Complicite, this…
Review: Phèdre
Despite being exhausted by Albacon, I decided to head out to the Spectrum Monday night with my pals Ron and Peg because they were rebroadcasting Helen Mirren’s star turn in Ted Hughes’ translation of Racine’s Phèdre at the National Theatre in London. I was sighing from the get go: they had a new introduction from…
Theatre Round-Up
I’ve been lucky enough to have some great theatre outings in the last few weeks, but I’ve been short on time to talk about them. I slipped off to Massachusetts to visit Shakespeare & Co and catch both The Comedy of Errors and Richard III. The former was in the Bernstein Theatre with the troupe…
The Scottish Play, the Russian Play and Lowe in Basingstoke
Ah, it’s always fun to hit the Globe; I had missed their Macbeth earlier, so was glad to have a chance to catch it before it ended. The staging was a bit more elaborate than the usual plain stage: there was a double ring with chains and drapery over the stage, and a kind of…
Zombie Land
I came out of The White Guard today, hopped on my bike and thought I had landed in 28 Days Later. I had misgivings about the Waterloo roundabout, always an insane mess of cars, bikes and other vehicles and there was — no one. I have never seen the streets of London so empty (at…
K. A. Laity 