Kate Maltby

From 18th Century Shakespearian pretenders to the new establishment, if you find yourself looking for an artistic respite from sports overload at the Olympic Games, there will be few more exciting places to be in 2012 than Shakespeare’s Globe. In the spirit of Olympic internationalism, the Globe will be inviting 38 different companies from around the world to perform the complete plays of Shakespeare in their own languages (it seems they don’t count Double Falsehood either). For all that I’ve complained about the odd misstep, the Globe, with its inspirational research department, remains one of the greatest sources of theatrical energy in Europe. This latest project will only affirm that position.

    Plaster the name ‘William Shakespeare’ on your theatre posters, and you’re sure to get bums on seats – even if Shakespeare didn’t quite write the play in question. That’s the rationale behind the slew of productions of the mysterious Cardenio, or Double Falsehood, the latest of which has opened at the Union Theatre.  This latest production is fresh and pacy – and buoyed by energetic performances by Emily Plumtree, Emily Plumtree and Adam Redmore – but it’s hard to watch without a gnawing sense of astonishment at the chutzpah of the company’s claim to place this flimsy curio alongside masterpieces like Macbeth or Measure for Measure.

For ten years, Tennessee Williams poured his soul into The Two-Character Play.  It was the longest he ever spent working on one play and it would prove to be his most overtly personal expression. The Two-Character Play is the story of a hopeless brother and sister -  she riddled with substance abuse and delusions, he with despair – a dark fantasy of Williams’ relationship with his sister Rose, who was probably schizophrenic and was lobotomized against his wishes. For ten years, Tennessee Williams poured his soul into The Two-Character Play.  It was the longest he ever spent working on one play and it would prove to be his most overtly personal expression.

Riverside Studios stills owes much of its reputation as one of London’s most daring powerhouses of fringe theatre to Peter Gill.  As its founding Artistic Director, Gill inaugurated the Riverside tradition of high-risk commissions from young, experimental troupes alongside the latest international innovators. So now that Gill has entered his eighth decade still a major force in British theatre, it’s refreshing to see his old haunt reviving two of his earliest plays, showcasing his writing at its most rebellious and raw. Riverside Studios stills owes much of its reputation as one of London’s most daring powerhouses of fringe theatre to Peter Gill.

It’s November 1938 and Sylvia, a paranoid Jewish woman in Brooklyn, is struck by hysterical paralysis.  But what’s really constricting her: fear of Germany’s Nazis or fear of her husband at home?   There’s something crude and jagged about Arthur Miller’s late play, Broken Glass, but in the Tricycle Theatre’s new production, it’s given a bright sparkle, thanks to a near flawless ensemble cast.  For Miller, as he told his collaborator David Thacker  the title Broken Glass signified not only Kristallnacht, which obsesses Sylvia, but also the moment in the Jewish marriage ceremony when the bridegroom shatters a glass goblet under his foot.

  The Southbank has always been an anarchic place. Shakespeare’s Globe proudly reminds visitors that Elizabethan theatres were considered far too lawless – and, implicitly, too much fun – to be licensed within the city limits. After years of rubbing shoulders with gamblers, pimps, and bear-baiters, by 1815 most theatres had advanced to the semi-respectability of the West End, only to be replaced in Southwark by their natural heirs, the lunatics of Bedlam.

When was the last time you shuddered in the stalls as a deathly thriller played out on stage?  It’s a long time since the heyday of the West End whodunnit, when audiences piled tight into theatres only to better leap from their seats and squeal each time Death struck again. The world expert on modern storytelling structures, Princeton professor Peter Brooks, claims that rise of the thriller was directly related to middle class anxiety about social and familial disorder – perhaps, in Broken Britain, there are few suffocating nuclear families from which to escape, and the chaos of the outside world is less of a shocking intrusion than a constant presence.

There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be Another Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary. There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be Another Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary. The audience isn’t fooled. We can see that she’s posing with a stiff sequined evening bag, the flap held open like the cover of a book.