★★★★☆ The timelessness of Shakespeare’s work has often resulted in efforts to modernise and contextualise his plays in different ways, and with varying results. This English Touring Theatre production of Othello is an example of how this can be done elegantly: with modern set and costume designs, but preserving the language and tone of the original play to great effect.
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★★★☆☆ In the early 1900s a box labelled ‘Old Papers, No Value’, was discovered in Nottinghamshire. It contained a manuscript of the Roman de Silence, a story from 13th century France, in octosyllabic verse. It tells of a young girl struggling to find a fulfilling role in an unjust, patriarchal society that bans women from inheriting land.
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★★★★☆ For the uninitiated, this is how it works: Mischief Theatre specialise in improvised stagings where the actors construct a shambolic, daft and eclectic play on-the-spot based on audience suggestions.
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Watching a Jackson video today we see that, like Fred Astaire from an earlier generation, dance is not something he does, it is more a mode of being. That is to say he did not dance to the music, rather the music used his body to manifest itself by other means . . . the songs are true perennials, which on last night’s showing, have lost none of their appeal
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★★★★☆ The Birmingham Royal Ballet uses the 1960 Frederick Ashton choreography with music by John Lanchbery whose score is adapted from that of Ferdinand Hérold. Colourful settings by Osbert Lancaster and the excellent Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Barry Wordsworth complete the package.
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★★★★☆ DUSTY, The Dusty Springfield Musical, especially with Katherine Kingsley as its head, brings one of Britain’s greatest female vocalists back for a glorious but painful reprise – ‘There is a sadness there in my voice,’ Dusty once said. ‘I was born with it. Sort of melancholy. Comes with being Irish-Scottish. Melancholy and mad at the same time.’
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