In our blasé age, we may take for granted that a remote Yorkshire parsonage managed to produce three sisters who defied rigid Victorian convention to give voice to raw passions and sexual frustration no respectable woman was meant to feel.
This play is a picaresque adventure describing the life of Emilia Bassano Lanier. Emilia, born in 1569, was a direct contemporary of Shakespeare, and perhaps the inspiration of his Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses comprise nearly 12,000 lines and over 250 myths that have inspired more modern writers as great as Shakespeare and Dante.
What do you do when life gives you lemons? Make lemonade is the wrong answer, says Elf Lyons, who is the product – and that’s not too economic a term – of father Gerard Lyons, former economic advisor to Boris Johnson, artist mother Annette Lyons and the Philippe Gaulier clown school on the outskirts of Paris.
This is Shakespeare light. Very light. Antic Disposition’s presentation of Shakespeare’s 1598 comedy is aimed at touring in South West France during the summer months when Paris empties and the French take to the countryside.
Writer, philosopher and English aristocrat Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was way ahead of her time and she knew it, writing: “I regard not so much the present but future ages”.
Polarity & Proximity, a triple bill, follows the success earlier in the week of Romeo & Juliet. This London programme’s aim is to reveal the range of styles this strong company employs.
Romeo & Juliet, set to Sergei Prokofiev’s 1935 composition, is one of the most thrilling dramatic ballets ever produced in the twentieth century.
I Am Of Ireland is an epic piece of theatre rooted in Irish identity, politics and history. It journeys from The Troubles to The Good Friday Peace Agreement and on to today.
When Iolanthe in 1882 became the fourth consecutive major success for Gilbert and Sullivan, Gladstone, a Conservative-turned-Liberal, was prime minister and women had no vote.
The London theatre scene could easily manage without another musical about love. But the UK premiere of this Australian-born celebration of the greatest of emotions by Peter Rutherford and James Millar is nevertheless as welcome, even as necessary, as every generation’s attempts to redefine love for themselves.
The End of Eddy, Unicorn Theatre. Review by Barbara Lewis.
Under Stewart Laing’s inspired direction, four permanently-glowing screens help to convey the bigoted characters of a charmless northern French village, where violence, shame, pride, racism and homophobia form the fabric of society.