This above all, to thine own self be true …
Controversial comic Russell Brand has just finished an early tour of a show called My Life by Shakespeare in which he tells his own life story using the words of the Bard – exactly as self-involved as that concept sounds – however it's been well reviewed. According to The Guardian, what Brand is doing is using ‘Shakespeare as self-help’: ‘“This [sic] is the winter of our discontent” speaks to adolescent Russell, angry and outcast in his native Grays. Anti-colonialist Caliban channels the rage he felt when his mum's new partner invaded their home. He recasts “Alas, poor Yorick” as a lament (hypothetical, thankfully) for his comedy hero David Jason.’
The same reviewer goes on to remark that ‘The show's optimum audience may be those who, like [Brand], were alienated from Shakespeare at school and have seldom revisited the plays since.’ Or, presumably, equally those still at school who might appreciate this re-using of his texts to a purpose applicable to their modern lives. My Life by Shakespeare closed at the Royal & Derngate in Northampton on 6 December, but should the production be revived it might be worth considering for a trip. Alternatively, one could always steal the concept for the devising classroom …
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces …
The Rose Theatre's 2018 performance of Macbeth
Shakespeare's Rose Theatre, the pop-up Elizabethan Theatre-in-a-car park which graced the city of York this summer, is due to return for a summer residency in 2019 not only to York but simultaneously for nine weeks at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
Not having Puck's capacity to put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, it will be necessary to build a second iteration of the temporary 13-sided playhouse, which will be done at Blenheim over a three-week period in late June and early July, using scaffolding, corrugated iron and timber. Accompanied by its Elizabethan village, featuring ‘wagon’ performances of Elizabethan-style entertainment, including comic mini-plays, speeches and medieval musicians; food and drink housed in oak-framed and reed-thatched buildings; and an Elizabethan garden, created by a leading Yorkshire garden designer, with ornate box-edged beds of vegetables, cottage flowers and herbs; the site at Blenheim Palace will be yards from the historic Shakespeare's Way, which bisects the Estate.
Productions at the theatre in York, at the foot of the 13th century Clifford's Tower, will run from 25 June to 1 September, while the new theatre at Blenheim Palace will be open from 8 July-7 September 2019. Between the two theatres there will be four companies of actors performing eight Shakespeare plays. www.shakespearesrosetheatre.com
Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed …
© Sony Pictures Classics
A promotional image from the new film
Kenneth Branagh co-stars with Judi Dench in his latest Shakespearean film, due for full release in 2019: All Is True will tell the story of the Bard of Avon (Branagh) and his wife Anne Hathaway (confusingly, Judi Dench) in the last three years of Shakespeare's life – from 1613 when the Globe Theatre was destroyed by fire (cannon fire, to be precise, during a production of All Is True, the alternative title of Henry VIII), until his death at the age of 52 in 1616.
With a script by Ben Elton, whose Upstart Crow has been (in this editor's humble opinion) a real triumph on the BBC lately, and other star cast members including Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton, it's likely that this imagined insight into Shakespeare's domestic life will be popular among audiences – and it's showing for a week at the end of this year in order to make it eligible for the 2019 Oscars too.
Could I find out the woman's part in me…
The National Theatre have added The Donmar Warehouse's all-female Shakespeare Trilogy to their On Demand In Schools service. Julius Caesar, Henry IV and The Tempest, directed by Phyllida Lloyd and set in a women's prison, with all-female casts including Harriet Walter as Caesar are all now available to watch in secondary schools, free.
More than 3,880 schools are signed up to the service which offers curriculum-linked productions free of charge to schools across the country: fourteen productions are available in all, recorded in high-definition in front of a live theatre audience, and can be watched in full or in key scenes as a teacher chooses.
To accompany the Shakespeare Trilogy recordings, the Donmar has created digital learning resources that have been developed in partnership with the Trilogy company, teachers and young people. Designed to support the teaching of Drama, English and PSHE, the resources give further context to the development of the Shakespeare Trilogy, and explorations of its key themes and contemporary relevance to young people. www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/schools