DARK SECRETS: 2 | Vintage Vibes

Galway international arts festival: Reunion; Endgame – review

A family reunion unravels with viciousness and humour in Mark O’Rowe’s new play. And Garry Hynes’s searing direction makes Beckett new

The Guardian - UK · Jul 21, 2024

King Lear review – veteran Robert Menzies leads a minimalist take on Shakespeare tragedy

Pier 2/3, Sydney, then Arts Centre MelbourneThis stripped-back Bell Shakespeare production, staged in the round, leaves the actors struggling to grab the heartstrings when you can’t see their faces

The Guardian - AU · Jun 21, 2024

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 · Jun 21, 2024

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 · Nov 3, 2023

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 · Oct 31, 2023

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 · Sep 28, 2023

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 · Jul 4, 2023

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 · Jun 25, 2023

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 · Jun 23, 2023

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 · Jun 16, 2023