A Small Mind At The Theatre

Seemingly ever since I have found theatre, Mr William Shakespeare has had some sort of anniversary and 2016 is no different, this time the anniversary is his death. Now while I admire the significant impact that the bard has had on theatre, I concur with a line that the character of Sue Delve says in Shaxpeare's Box, in that I pretty much forgot about him after GSCE. Well that was until I found myself in the last couple of years at many of his plays, through supporting the performing groups rather than my need to see the plays in question. This is therefore probably why Shaxpeare's Box will possibly be my favourite Shakespeare influenced play this year (and may remain for some time), as its not one of his plays. There is also a love through Brian Wright's magnificent script that went some way to give to me a greater understanding of his work than some pompous academic might relay. Set in modern day Northampton it tells the tale of a discovery of a mysterious box in the ...

I have never made it a secret of my dislike of Mr Shakespeare's work. It's not so much that I hate the stories or the characters he creates, its just that my ears fail completely to attune to his language and often while watching performances, more than any other play I lean towards the production and visual aspect of the show. Therefore is was once again that during my latest Shakespeare, I watched costumes, sets, lighting and some most glorious make-up work going on. Not to say that I didn't see the actors superb work, there bodies and facial expressions helping me beyond the troublesome language and managing to take me into the story. It helped this time that I was coming at Macbeth as the first of the bards plays that I was seeing for a second time live, having seen the spectacular (and highly physical) feast that the University Of Northampton provided last year ( review here ). I therefore had a little more knowledge of the tale than I normally would. Here the Masque...

Something like twenty-two years ago I studied Amadeus by Peter Shaffer along with the same playwright's Equus and The Royal Hunt Of The Sun for English Literature. I never saw a live production of it then or since (or any of them), just the film. Therefore when I heard that the Masque Theatre were performing it I knew I had to see it (even allowing for the fact that I had the small matter of sixteen Flash shows the same week). I won't pretend that I remember much about it from back then and I won't necessarily say I remember liking it much. At the time I was just grateful it wasn't Shakespeare which we were doing most of the time (some things never change). What we have almost with Amadeus is a one man show and that one man is not the title character. Antonio Salieri played by John Myhill is the star of the show, and remembering him for his scene stealing turn as Benedick in some Shakespeare I saw last year, he once again didn't disappoint. For an amateur show, th...