Category: Bell Shakespeare

  Bell Shakespeare presents THE TEMPEST, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 19 August -18 September, 2015. This production of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1611) from Bell Shakespeare, Directed by John Bell, is Mr Bell’s farewell production for the company he founded twenty-five years ago. Mr Bell has played the role of Prospero three times in his career and it is interesting to read in his Director’s Notes, in the program, his debunking of the notion that THE TEMPEST was Shakespeare’s last play and that it is a valediction, with Prospero as a self-portrait of…

Bell Shakespeare presents, HENRY V, in the Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House, 21 Oct – 14 Nov, 2014. Some children and their teachers are trapped in a classroom/bunker in London during the German Blitzreig of World War Two. The teachers provide the children the text of HENRY V, by William Shakespeare, to read and rehearse in an improvised manner, to distract them from the surrounding chaos. With a concussive Sound Design (Composer and Sound Design, Steve Francis), and Lighting Design (Sian James-Holland), an atmosphere of alarm outside the room brings a reality of war to the environment. Anne Gardiner…

AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (ACO) in association with Bell Shakespeare presents INTIMATE LETTERS at the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. 24 August, Sydney Opera House, 26 – 30th August at City Recital Hall, Angel Place. The Australian Chamber orchestra (ACO) with Bell Shakespeare presented a program of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Bedrich Smetana, and Leos Janacek, accompanied by the reading of some letters from the composers, which contextualised the writing of the compositions. The orchestra lead by Guest Director and Violin, Gordan Nikolic. Sixteen year old Mozart composed Divertimento in F major, K. 138 (1772). Composed, for four separate string…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Bell Shakespeare presents TARTUFFE, The Hypocrite, by Moliere, in a New Version, by Justin Fleming, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 26 July -23 August. TARTUFFE – The Hypocrite is a New Version of the Moliere play (1664) by Australian playwright, Justin Fleming, which was first presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) in 2008, as THE HYPOCRITE. It is now to be seen, presented by The Bell Shakespeare Company, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. Peter Evans, Co-Artistic Director of the Bell Company, once again directs, and this production,…

Bell Shakespeare present THE WINTER’S TALE by William Shakespeare in the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House. Shall I simply write the bare and naked facts of my experience in the theatre: it was good, it was bad; I liked it, I hated it, or, should I try to give an analysis of why I felt that way? THE WINTER’S TALE by William Shakespeare was written in the reign of James I, the Jacobean era. With PERICLES (1607-8), CYMBELINE (1609-10) , THE WINTER’S TALE (1610-11) and THE TEMPEST (1611) we enter the period of Shakespeare’s Tragicomic Romances … from PERICLES…

Bell Shakespeare presents PHEDRE by Jean Racine, in a new version by Ted Hughes, in the Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House. PHEDRE by Jean Racine. The body of the story in this play has its origins from the time of the fountainhead of the flowering of Athens and its peoples, the fifth century BCE, who were describing a totally new conception of human life, and showed, for the first time, what the human mind was for. “The Greek legacy”, says Peter Watson in his book, Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, “is the greatest the world has yet…