Julius Caesar

‘Julius Caesar’ is a harder sell as an outdoor family show than ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, which Principal Theatre Company is staging in Coram’s Fields on alternate days. In response, director Paul Gladwin has put everything in modern dress and upped the comedy quotient. We get football-style chants at Caesar’s … Continue Reading Julius Caesar

The Fear of Breathing

The Finborough is keeping time with real life in this harrowing verbatim piece, knitted together from secret interviews conducted in Syria by journalists Paul Wood and Ruth Sherlock and director Zoe Lafferty. A clamour of voices – including a hotel owner, a radio DJ, a student activist and members of … Continue Reading The Fear of Breathing

Ten Billion

think we’re fucked.” That’s Professor Stephen Emmott’s stark conclusion at the end of Ten Billion, which reveals in fascinating and horrifying ways the true nature of the damage we have inflicted on our climate in the past 300 years. Ten billion is the estimated world population by the end of the century … Continue Reading Ten Billion

Interview: Gregory Doran

Newly appointed RSC artistic director Gregory Doran talks to Tom Wicker about his Africa-set production of ‘Julius Caesar’ Gregory Doran is keeping his cards close to his chest when it comes to his plans for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although he takes over from Michael Boyd as artistic director from … Continue Reading Interview: Gregory Doran

The Trojan War and Peace

The Scoop’s sunken amphitheatre is a natural fit for Phil Willmott’s ambitious adaptation of Aeschylus’s ‘Oresteia’ trilogy, the latest in Steam Industry Theatre’s annual series of free outdoor shows. The sequence kicks off with the child-friendly ‘The Trojan Horse’, which makes a song and dance of the siege of Troy … Continue Reading The Trojan War and Peace

Blue Remembered Hills

This adaptation of the 1979 Dennis Potter TV play (which starred Helen Mirren) gives us a childhood haunted by the Second World War and the spectre of adulthood. Storm clouds loom over the blue remembered hills of A.E. Housman’s Shropshire Lad as the actions of a group of seven-year-olds lead … Continue Reading Blue Remembered Hills

Blue Remembered Hills

Interior (Natasha Tripney): A thicket of skeletal trees made from scaffolding poles painted a jarring shade of blue forms the backdrop to Anna Ledwich’s stage adaptation of Dennis Potter’s television play. The cast, playing seven year olds, clamber and scramble across these metal branches; they swing by their arms and drop … Continue Reading Blue Remembered Hills