Monthly Archives: July 2016

Shakespeare’s Henry V can be acted as either patriotic jingoism or as anti-war propaganda. The latter interpretation is much more popular these days. Henry, the man, can be acted as either hero or war criminal. It all depends which bits … Continue reading →

Mike Bartlett’s Wild is inspired by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden who copied an enormous amount of classified US documents and leaked them to the press. The whistleblower (Jack Farthing) is in a hotel bedroom in Russia, on the run and … Continue reading →

20-year-old Charles Hamilton Sorley was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Loos in the First World War. 37 war poems were found in his kit. Robert Graves ranked Sorley with Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg. Neil McPherson’s It … Continue reading →

Shakespeare’s Richard III has always been popular with actors and audiences. Richard Burbage and David Garrick scored a huge success. So did Edmund Kean. The role was a major turning-point in Laurence Olivier’s career. The best Richards of our times … Continue reading →

Carrie Cracknell directs an excellent revival of Terence Rattigan’s masterpiece. Helen McCrory plays Hester Collyer, a respectable middle-class woman, a clergyman’s daughter, who has left her husband, a High Court judge, for a much younger and sexier man, a former … Continue reading →

In 1936 Arthur Miller, 20 years old and at Michigan University, wrote No Villain and won a playwriting competition. The prize was $250 dollars which he much needed to pay for his studies. The play, very autobiographical, remained unperformed until … Continue reading →