Category: Shakespeare

Arts Radar in association with B Sharp presents A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM by William Shakespeare in the Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre. In his program notes Eamon Flack says he “suspects there’s a production of [A Midsummer Night’s Dream] in Sydney every few months”. It is in fact, for me, the fourth production that I have seen this year. In all my theatre going life it may be the Shakespearean play that I have seen most often. In the case of this production Mr Flack and his company of fellow artists set themselves “the task….. to try to shrink the play’s…

    The Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Festival 2009 present THE WAR OF THE ROSES, Part 1 & Part 2 by William Shakespeare adapted by Tom Wright & Benedict Andrews at the Sydney Theatre. Before we talk of the present production under the title THE WAR OF THE ROSES there will be a preamble of information that I think is relevant. ( Skip forward if you wish.) Shakespeare wrote two tetralogies or eight plays chronicling a turbulent 88 years of English History (from the 1380’s to the 1480’s) covering the reigns of English monarchs from that of Richard II to…

“In an exclusive boy’s boarding school, where students are forbidden to read Romeo and Juliet, four students put on a secret production of the play which brings violence, betrayal, lust, love and mortality into their own lives.” This is an all male Romeo and Juliet set in this particular location to capture the sense of “sexual hysteria” that Mr Calarco believes the Shakespeare play, is, in many ways about. The adapter Joe Calarco goes on to say in his notes to his text: “Put those boys in a school where Catholicism reigns, patriarchy rules, and where simply reading Shakespeare is…

At Wharf 2 The SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY EDUCATION present ROMEO AND JULIET. The text has been edited to play even less than “the two hours traffic” the Chorus tells us about in the original. It has been edited for 8 actors and maybe too slimly to do justice to Shakespeare. He has however weathered centuries of this abuse, so not to blame or worry too much. On a red dirt floor with a ubiquitous, deteriorating ute and a middle height wooden tower (it was presumably, once a water tower- I’m guessing that design detail,- and not just a convenient acting…