The Latest Breaking News from Shakespeare

The week in theatre: The Years; Pericles – review

Extraordinary performances from five actors all playing the writer Annie Ernaux add up to a five-star adaptation of her Nobel prize-winning book. And a fairytale take on Pericles

The Guardian - UK · Aug 11, 2024

Pericles review – Alfred Enoch rules the stage in a neglected Shakespeare

Tamara Harvey’s first production as the Royal Shakespeare Company’s co-artistic director highlights the play’s sharp political intelligence

The Guardian - UK · Aug 8, 2024

How do you read a poem? Embrace the sound, the strangeness and the ambiguity

A word is dead When it is said, Some say, I say it just Begins to live That day. – Emily Dickinson If someone asked you how you felt and you said you had “a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling was the light of setting…

The Conversation · Aug 6, 2024

As You Like It review – the RSC’s garden party is altogether too ordinary

Gender games, rebirth and affection remain in this 80-minute slash of the Shakespeare romcom, which is stylish but short on invention

The Guardian - UK · Jul 25, 2024

Can a poem be adapted into a video game? Here’s what I learned from trying

Video game adaptations of novels and short fiction have long helped bring works of fiction to new audiences. The Witcher, for example, which now spans three games and a Netflix series, began life as a series of fantasy stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

The Conversation · Jul 24, 2024

Lincoln called for divided Americans to heed their ‘better angels,’ and politicians have invoked him ever since in crises − but for Abe, it was more than words

Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, community leaders, clergy and politicians including President Joe Biden have called on Americans to tone down white-hot political rhetoric. Some have invoked the words of one figure in particular: Abraham Lincoln.

The Conversation · Jul 23, 2024

A New York accent in ancient Rome? So what, it’s no less accurate than RP

Denzel Washington has been accused of inauthenticity in Gladiator II. But why is upper-class, southern English considered the norm, asks historian Rebecca Rideal

The Guardian - UK · Jul 18, 2024

Colonials mess with Shakespeare and get a global hit

Making Shakespeare's longest play into a successful opera is no easy feat, but an adaptation by "a bunch of colonials" is premiering at the Sydney Opera House.

AAP · Jul 17, 2024

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench review – a class act

Ripe language and impish humour abound as Barbara Flynn reads the actor’s entertaining recollections of seven decades on stage – and Dench herself recites excerpts from the Bard

The Guardian - UK · Jul 12, 2024

Macbeth (An Undoing) review – Lady M takes over Shakespeare’s play … but what for?

Playwright Zinnie Harris mounts an intriguing war on the bard but doesn’t bother building her own vision

The Guardian - AU · Jul 11, 2024