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DARK SECRETS: 2 | Vintage Vibes

Bell Shakespeare’s new King Lear understands the joy of a good tragedy

It is a common reflex to reach for Aristotle’s Poetics to determine what a good tragedy should be. Aristotle says there are good reasons to enjoy a good tragedy, especially if its ergon or telos (its function) works well. This function is to trigger the pleasure (in an audience) of…

The Conversation

OPINION - Straight Acting review: It’s an eye-catching claim: was William Shakespeare queer?

This short, snappy work of popular scholarship by Will Tosh, head of research at Shakespeare’s Globe, is a necessary provocation and a highly selective bid to claim our national poet as a queer icon. Fair enough. As Tosh says in his introduction, red-faced heterosexuals have spent centuries explaining away the…

Evening Standard

King Lear at the Almeida review: Danny Sapani's bear-like king reigns supreme over Yaël Farber's production

At 53, the actor’s a young Lear, but he delivers a forceful, moving rendition of the doomed monarch

Evening Standard

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CBS Salutes Norman Lear With Primetime Special

‘Entertainment Tonight’ presents special for the late mega-producer

Broadcasting & Cable

Lifelong fan Sir Kenneth Brannagh 'all over' Tottenham's fine start - but Ange Postecoglou will ignore advice

Spurs manager was Brannagh's guest at a Halloween showing of his production of King Lear

Evening Standard

OPINION - The industry backlash over Taylor's versions is a red herring: it's got much bigger problems

Labels seeking to stop artists re-recording their music is only part of a much wider issue regarding contracts

Evening Standard

King Lear review – Kenneth Branagh’s fast and feverish tragedy

At two hours with no interval, the actor-director’s production hurtles past at such speed that the depths of the play are too rarely realised

The Guardian - UK

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Michael Gambon: an actor who let his heart and soul crack open

A star with incredible presence, Gambon brought heft and delicacy, mischief and feeling, to the stage and screen

The Guardian - UK

Richard II in a hot tub, Much Ado done anew: Canada’s Stratford festival puts shocks into Shakespeare

A disco king hits the dancefloor, Beatrice and Benedick’s romcom gets a feminist framing and Lear faces dystopia as the revered rep company returns in full force

The Guardian - UK

Coronation Street star is gripping as distinctive King Lear in bold production

Theatre collective Unseemly Women brought King Lear to Prescot's Shakespeare North Playhouse

Liverpool Echo

Glenda Jackson obituary: Oscar winner who spent 23 years as a Labour MP

Fearless, sharply intelligent and sometimes caustic, Glenda Jackson, who has died aged 87, “had a career unmatched by any of her contemporaries”, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. From 1957, she enjoyed huge success on film (she won two Oscars) and on stage; then, in 1992, she gave it all…

The Week

Appreciation: Glenda Jackson, formidable English talent who helped change contemporary acting’s tone

There was never anything shrinking about the confidence Glenda Jackson projected on stage and screen in her heyday. Afflicted with an uncommon common sense, her characters were defined by their sharp intelligence, independence and, yes, irritability. They were nobody’s fool, even when they wound up with the short end of…

Los Angeles Times

Lear review – all-female cast add novelty and confusion to the tragedy

Coronation Street’s Christine Mackie gives a passionate performance as the raging patriarch in a production that has moments of invention but too little clarity about the power relationships between the characters

The Guardian - UK

‘Succession syndrome’ prevalent among wealthy households, psychiatrists warn

An addiction centre says the dynastic struggles of the TV show are indicative of struggles faced by powerful families

The Guardian - UK

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The New Daily

How will Succession end? What might come of the final 90 minutes

The final episode of Succession is upon us. Questions remain around who will be in control and what the cost will be.

The Guardian - UK

The twilight king: why Charles’s coronation does not feel like the start of a new era

Elizabeth’s crowning seemed like a new dawn. But the reign of Charles begins in a kingdom under a cloud

Tribune News Service

Editorial: Surprise (not)! Trump responds to felony charges with rage and bluster

While we are reluctant to compare Donald Trump to the fictional characters of Shakespeare given the Bard’s skill, subtlety and wit, the ex-president’s rambling Tuesday night seethe-a-thon from the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago had all the elements of King Lear’s Act III rage on the hearth. If…

The Guardian - UK

Are you siding with Harry or the palace? Either way, you fall into the royalist trap

The prince’s tell-all media blitz was meant to lift the lid on royal failings. Even more clearly, it shows the price Britain pays for monarchy, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

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Daily Mirror

UK weather: Heavy rain warnings as Met Office forecasts flooding and thunder

Temperatures will remain between 7 and 12 degrees - roughly where they should be at this time of year - but showers and gusty winds will make the weather feel seasonably unsettled

The Guardian - UK

House of the Dragon review – this Game of Thrones prequel is gorgeous, opulent television

George RR Martin’s world struts its way back on to our screens with utter confidence and brio. As captivating as it is gruesome, it’s like a greatest hits playlist of Westeros at its meatiest

The Guardian - UK

‘The greatest director the world has ever seen’ – actors salute Peter Brook

Adrian Lester stripped back Hamlet with him, Janet Suzman can still hear the audience gasp, Glenda Jackson dug deep for the director and for Frances de la Tour he was incomparable

The Guardian - UK

A sporting show of Cornish pride

Brief letters: The birthplace of rugby | Echoes of King Lear | A productive read | Balancing act | Missing penguins

The Guardian - UK

King Lear review – Kathryn Hunter’s frail, fond old ruler almost unbearably affecting

Back in the role she first played in 1997, Hunter uses her extraordinary transformative powers to show us the king as a geriatric child at the head of a disintegrating nation

The Guardian - UK

Playwright David Eldridge: ‘What’s important to me is to move people’

The dramatist and West Ham fan on exploring what it means to be a couple in his trilogy of plays and how King Lear blew his mind

The Guardian - UK

Queen Lear review – all-female acting troupe do a village Shakespeare

This heartwarming documentary about local villagers touring rural Turkey is full of transformative encounters and communal enjoyment

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