coronavirus




Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 4: This England : The Histories (2000-1)

Posted on May 3, 2020 | 0 comments

    Before Covid, we talked endlessly in the public sphere about ‘Englishness’. But before Brexit, before the Irish backstop, before the Scottish IndyRef, even before the opening of the devolved Scottish and Welsh parliament buildings, the Royal Shakespeare Company was the first place that...

Read More

Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 3: Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998)

Posted on Apr 26, 2020 | 0 comments

I promised that for every week that theatres remained closed, I’d write a post in tribute to a piece of life-changing theatre. But this week, we’ve reached Sunday, and I still haven’t posted anything. There is a reason: I’ve had to spend a lot of this week visiting hospitals to have some serious...

Read More

Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 2: Joanna Laurens’ The Three Birds (2000)

Posted on Apr 18, 2020 | 0 comments

  Last week, I started this series by writing about the National Theatre. Panto aside (yuck), when you’re taken for the first time as a young person you’re often taken to the big theatres: the NT and the RSC were the two powerhouse portals in the late 90s. By contrast, I’m going to write about a...

Read More

Lockdown Recording: ‘On Good Friday. Riding Westwards. 1613’ – John Donne

Posted on Apr 10, 2020 | 0 comments

For friends, by private request, and for anyone else who wanders along. Three years ago I wrote about this poem, and why I read it every Good Friday, here:...

Read More

Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 1: Nunn’s Merchant of Venice (1999)

Posted on Apr 7, 2020 | 0 comments

“If we do meet again, why, we shall smile”. So says Shakespeare’s Brutus to Cassius, in Julius Caesar. The Globe has repurposed this quotation as a defiant strapline for its online response to the Coronavirus crisis: its website and social media images now declare “if when we meet again, why, we...

Read More