Skip to main content

Gang fights, Ophelia up close, and Mark Rylance. Happy birthday, Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Globe filled Westminster Abbey with a free-range assortment of famous – and dangerous – characters for this moving celebration

A brawl broke out in the nave of Westminster Abbey on Saturday night with rival gangs noisily attacking each other. It turned out they were Montagues and Capulets – and members of Intermission Youth Theatre who were launching an extraordinary celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday in a famously sacred space. They were joined by actors from Shakespeare’s Globe and for 75 minutes the audience roamed among the building’s tombs and chapels, suddenly lighting on, or even being accosted by, familiar scenes and characters. Directed by Claire van Kampen, this might be dubbed In Yer Face, Bard.

The abbey seemed the right place for such an event. It is soaked in history: at one point I heard Richard II’s barbed account of Bolingbroke’s exit from London being delivered alongside the king’s own portrait. But the abbey is packed with literary and theatrical associations, too. In Poet’s Corner I stood by plaques commemorating Henry Irving and Laurence Olivier while gazing at Peter Scheemakers’ statue of Shakespeare, who himself seemed to be looking on approvingly as two actors played the Oberon-Titania quarrel scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DC2Oy7

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knives Out review – Daniel Craig goes Columbo in Cluedo whodunnit

Craig grills an all-star lineup of suspects when a wealthy novelist is found dead in Rian Johnson’s sharp, country-house murder mystery R ian Johnson unsheathes an entertainingly nasty, if insubstantial detective mystery with his new film, Knives Out. Back in 2005, his debut movie Brick (a high-school thriller) paid tribute to the hardboiled noir genre. Now he does the same thing for cosy crime, although there is nothing that cosy about it. Knives Out has a country house full of frowning suspects, deadpan servants and smirking ne’er-do-wells and an amusing performance from Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc, the brilliant amateur sleuth from Louisiana who annoys the hell out of one and all by smiling enigmatically, occasionally plinking a jarring high note on the piano during the drawing-room interrogation and pronouncing in his southern burr: “Ah suh-spect far-wuhl play!” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L0NKO4

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs