lockdown
Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 4: This England : The Histories (2000-1)
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...
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Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 3: Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998)
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...
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Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 2: Joanna Laurens’ The Three Birds (2000)
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...
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Lockdown Recording: ‘On Good Friday. Riding Westwards. 1613’ – John Donne
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:...
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Theatre That Changed My Life, Week 1: Nunn’s Merchant of Venice (1999)
“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...
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