Daily Archives: May 16, 2013

Titus Andronicus – May 2013

Experience: 8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Fentiman

Venue: Swan Theatre

Date: Thursday 16th May 2013

Our experience of Titus Andronicus is limited: the Deborah Warner production in 1988 with Brian Cox – excellent – the 2003 RSC production with David Bradley – good but wordy – and the Complete Works Ninagawa production in 2006 – spectacular but not to my taste. Despite this relatively brief acquaintance with the play, we were looking forward to an evening of gore and misery and we weren’t disappointed. Being the first performance there were naturally a few hiccups, but even so the production already feels like a major success, and we can only hope that the faint-ometer doesn’t break through overuse.

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Hamlet – May 2013 (1)

Experience: 7/10

Public Understudies Performance

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Tinuke Craig

Venue: RST

Date: Thursday 16th May 2013

These understudy runs can be really good fun and very interesting; seeing how an actor manages to find their own performance within an established production can be enlightening, so we were keen to see how the understudies would handle their roles in this unusual, design driven production. Apart from Greg Hicks playing the roles of Claudius and the ghost – John Stahl was unavailable – everyone else was playing a different part while most of the other leads – Jonathan Slinger, Pippa Dixon, Alex Waldmann and Robin Soans – were occasionally on stage as extras. Jonathan Slinger took the part of Gonzago in the initial mime sequence.

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