Falstaff at Glyndebourne Festival 2025

Falstaff is a jolly easy to approach opera so it was no surprise that friends wanted to see it with us.

Booking went well, as it had all season and we got seats Red Upper Circle B42-45 for £130 each.

Travel went almost to plan but we were too late into Lewes to visit The Depository for lunch so we settled for the cafe in the station instead and that actually worked well. It also meant that we were in prime position to get a good seat in the first coach.

And being in the first coach meant that we were able to secure a table in the Veg Patch Stretch Tent which is our current first-choice location.

Somehow we spent the almost two hours before the opera chatting over cake and bubbles and failed to go for the traditional walk around the lake. Not that it mattered, going to Glyndebourne with friends is as much about the friends than it is about the gardens.

Falstaff the opera is based on Shakespeare's  comic play The Merry Wives of Windsor which, in turn, reuses his character Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2.

Falstaff has propositioned more than one lady and when they find out they scheme together to get their playful revenge.

This leads to a Brian Rix style farce where people hide from their pursuers behind screens and in laundry baskets. Falstaff gets a comeuppance of sorts and we all head outside for the long dining interval.

In the final act Falstaff needs a further lesson and this time it all has a Midsummer's Night Dream feel to it with the village children dressed as fairies. When the second bout of playful revenge is over Falstaff good humouredly takes the lesson and all ends well.

The music and singing matched the fun and tempo of the plot and the evening was terrifically entertaining.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 at Richmond Theatre

Most plays at Richmond Theatre interest me and most performances of anything by Shakespeare do too so the combination of both was unmissable. 

As usual, there was an ATG opening night offer and so I was able to get seat Upper Circle A12 for just £31.5. However, on the night the Upper Circle was closed, presumably because of low sales (for some shows they make no attempt to open the upper level), and I got bumped up to Dress Circle B6. Luckily there was no one tall in row A.

I had not had the opportunity to see The Merchant of Venice for many years and most of what I remembered was from school days. Because of that I do not know how much of a shift they made in moving it to England in 1936 when Mosley's Blackshirts were rampant.

I suspect that quite a bit was cut, to give more prominence to Shylock but this is just a suspicion and most of the text of this play was most definitely Shakespeare.

I understand why they set the play when and where they did but to end with the populous standing up for the Jews jarred a little when Shylock had refused any amount of money to save Antonio who was portrayed as an honourable fascist.

The messing about aside, this was a good Shakespeare with a good cast in which Joseph Millson shone as Antonio. Everything about the performance was good enough to let me forget the updating and to simply enjoy one of Shakespeare's more notable plays.

Macbeth at Olympic Theatre

There were two major versions of Macbeth on in London in 2024 and I chose to see the Ralph Fiennes and  Indira Varma version rather than the David Tennant and Crush Jumbo one. There were various reasons for this including the unusual staging of the first at Dock X and having a David Tennant version of Macbeth freely available on BBC Sounds (something BBC does not make enough of). That decision proved to be good and I absolutely loved Macbeth at Dock X.

Due to its obvious popularity the Tennant/Jumbo version returned to the stage and while I was more tempted this time, it being several months since I had seen a Macbeth, the pricing put me off what was not an urgent see.

Then it was broadcast in cinemas and paying just £20 was a lot more tempting than paying, say, £160 for a much worse view in a much less comfortable seat.

I have not yet found a regular pre-theatre place to eat in Barnes and on this evening I ended up having a plant-based burger in Coach and Horses which did the job.

From the start this was a radical version of Macbeth, staged in the round with a plain white stage and no props. The perimeter was black and in there lurked some of the cast, dressed in black, who provided off-stage voices. This included the three witches who we never saw.

The audience were wearing headphones and I never worked out why.

The final technology was the actors' microphones, an unexpected technology given the small size of the theatre. They were small and discrete and while they would have been hardly noticeable to the theatre audience they were very obvious to us watching in cinemas due to the many close-ups.

This was also a slightly abridged version running for about 90 minutes whereas the radio plays are almost 120 minutes. There is a lot of verbiage in Shakespeare so it is easy to cut stuff without impacting the story but while the text is unnecessary it is poetic and I find it hard to believe that it ever makes sense to ever cut any of it. And, rarely, the cuts here were large enough for even me to notice when some of it had gone.

All that said this was still a might fine production of a mighty fine play. The simplicity of the staging and the good lead performers, as at Dock X, allowed the play the space it needed to shine.

Twelfth Night at Orange Tree Theatre

I had not been to Orange Tree Theatre for a little while, by my standards, for various reasons but Shakespeare is always tempting so I forked out £29 for a seat in the second row (B45).

The billing for the show included "Oliver Ford Davies, one of the leading Shakespearean actors of his generation, returns to the OT to play Malvolio, opposite Jane Asher as Maria" and they both made the poster but while it is always good to see fine actors that was not part of my decision making.

This Twelfth Night was set in the 1940s and featured music and songs played on a piano in the middle of the stage. That might sound a little extreme, perverse even, but I found it to be a fairly honest version of the play and it was all the better for being so with the original words doing all of hard work.

Well, nost of the hard work - those words needed good actors to deliver them and with this cast we had them. In an ensemble performance I will pick on just two for special mention, Patricia Allison (also in the poster) as an earnest Viola and Robert Mountford as a gloriously funny Andrew Aguecheek.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's funnier and more approachable plays and this version was a lot of fun.

Player Kings at New Wimbledon Theatre

The opportunity to see Ian McKellen in a Shakespeare play close to home was too good to miss. It was expectedly pricey so I went for the Upper Circle where my ATG membership card got me seat A11 for a measly £25.

It was billed as a version of the two plays Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 but, other than the early start time of 6:30pm, there was no clue of the runtime and it was only when a friend got to the theatre just ahead of me and discovered that it was almost four hours! Luckily I am used to long plays and had been well stocked at the usual venue, Mai Thai, beforehand.

First the bad news. Henry IV 1 & 2 are not Shakespeare's best work with the two unrelated themes, the pure history of Henry IV and the tomfoolery of the Falstaff. There were some first-night issues too where the main problem was the safety curtain that was lowered at times for dramatic effect and when it did it hid half the stage, or more, for those of us in the cheap seats.

The good news was the smooth staging (too low curtains apart) which used curtains pulled from the sides to make the scenes changes seamless allowing the stories to move smoothly.

The best news was the performances. Of course Ian McKellen was good but he was in a supporting roll and praise must also go to Richard Coyle as Henry iV. The last time I saw him on stage was in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was also good to see a cameo role by Robin Soans.

The performances, and the staging, were more than enough to make the four hours fly past entertainingly. ot a great night, Henry IV was never going to be that, but it was certainly good.

Macbeth at Dock X

I have seen Macbeth numerous times and there has to be a pretty good reason to drag me out to see another version, and this production did that. Clearly Ralph Fiennes is a big attraction and I was also very tempted by the prospect of a staging in a performance space rather than a traditional theatre.

This was Julia's birthday treat so we pushed the boat out, quite a long way, and paid £85 each for our seats.

Dock X is in Canada Water which was convenient enough to get to (via dinner at Culture Grub by Waterloo) and a little difficult to find, we had to ask.

The venue was basic with bare concrete floors and simple seating in the auditorium. The stage was simple and raised and I had an excellent view of the whole stage ftom a corner position. I may have read my own biases into this but it looked more like an event audience than a theatre audience to me, e.g. it was much younger than I am used to for Shakespeare.

I was expecting the staging to do more than it did as the uniqueness of the production was billed as a key feature whereas I found it all very obvious. Indeed, productions like the one at National Theatre with Rory Kinnear in 2018 were much more experimental.

Essentially this was a standard production of Macbeth disguised as something more interesting.

Enough with the bad news, the production was probably the best Macbeth I have ever seen thanks to the production letting the words of Shakespeare do all the heavy lifting and to stellar performances by the two leads who gave those words the time and the space to flourish.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

I was a little surprised arriving at Glyndebourne to discover that I was there to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten because I had spent all the previous months in the booking processes on the false assumption that we were going to see The Fairy Queen by Purcell. This is also based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and we saw it at Glyndebourne in 2012.

We had also seen Britten's version before, in 2016, and I was very happy to go to either. No harm done, just some slight embarrassment.

Oddly none of our regular guests put this opera top of their list so just the two of us went, which made planning the arrangement so much easier. We travelled light with just a few sandwiches and some cakes planning to buy all our drinks there.

As is our practice when travelling by train, we arrived in Lewes in plenty of time to have a light lunch at The Depot next to the station and to have bit of a stroll around old Lewes before taking the pre-booked coach to Lewes.

There was bit of a rush to the Veg Patch Stretch Tent, our new favourite dining place there, and we were lucky to bag what looked to be the last unreserved table. Apparently, it has quickly become other people's favourite dining place.

The pre-opera period was easily filled with a round of cakes, hot drinks and a leisurely walk around the gardens.

At 4pm we made out way to our seats in Red Upper Circle Row D which cost us £146 each. Given the price of concert tickets these days that seems very reasonable.

The opera jumps in to the familiar story after the slow scene setting with the two couples already running through the woods and Oberon was already scheming against Tytania. 

Everything after that was magic.

Glyndebourne has exceptionally high standards and by those standards I felt that it had fallen a little short this year but this was top-notch stuff and more than made up for any previous slight disappointments.

The music was subtle, the singing lovely and the staging simple but stunning. Of course the story is very silly, and Oberon has no right to get away with how he behaved, but that was known beforehand and Shakespeare already forgiven.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was exactly the sort of opera that I keep going back to Glyndebourne to see.

Richard III at Rose Theatre

I do not need much urging to see any Shakespeare play and when it is on at my nearest theatre and holds the promise of being a modern version then going becomes a no-brainer.

Richard III is one of Shakespeare's more powerful, and dark, plays yet it gets performed much less frequently than, say, Lear, and I had only seen it twice in recent years, both in excellent productions.

And, as someone forced to watch Bridgerton, I was aware of Adjoa Andoh.

All that meant that I was quick to pay £40 for regular seat J33.

I walked to Rose Theatre giving myself enough time to buy a beer before going into the auditorium. It was pretty busy, which I always like to see.

I last saw Richard III in 2017 at Arcola Theatre so my memories of the story were not great. That may have helped this time as the story is the main point of the play with Richard rising to become king through the ruthless elimination of all competitors. Macbeth rises clumsily while Richard rises purposefully. It is possible to sympathise with Macbeth (or to blame his wife!) but Richard has no excuses. It's a gripping story and well worth watching again.

With Richard III at the heart of everything the play succeeds or fails on the actor playing the role and Adjoa Andoh was convincingly evil.

There were some modern elements to the production, such as Morris Dancing(!), these were small choices in the flavour of the piece and it remained a very recognisable Richard III, and I loved it for being so.

This production of Richard III managed to be both a traditional telling of the tale and have enough that was different to make it distinctive. 

Macbeth at The Cockpit

I was looking for a play to take my sister to on one of her visits up from Dorset and most of my more visited theatres either had things that I did not want to see on or I did want to see them so I had already booked for another day. The Cockpit is on my list of regularly visited places and when I saw that they were doing Macbeth the deal was done, who does not like the Scottish Play?!

It also set the foundation for the afternoon and evening which started with a walk around Bedford Park in Chiswick (we broke the journey in to London at Turnham Green station) and was followed by a curry at Lahori Church Street, just across the road from the theatre.

As usual I had done limited (at best) research beforehand so it was a surprise to find that the cast was all female, which was the second time that week following on from Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of).

The play otherwise was actually more conventional that I suspected. It ran for just over two hours so if it was abridged at all then it was minor.

Knowing the story of Macbeth fairly well helped as, due to being set during continuous wars, most of the actors wore battle fatigues (Lady Macbeth was the prominent exception) which made them a little hard to tell apart; Banquo was the one with red hair.

These were actors in training so some allowance could be made but apart from one who spoke a little too quickly at times for my taste I had no problems with their performances and was fairly impressed overall. And I remembered that there was a production of King Lear at National Theatre where some of the actors were very hard to understand.

The production of Macbeth thrived on the gruesome story and Shakespeare's poetic language, which were enough, but it lacked the depth of other productions, which is not surprising.

I enjoyed this Macbeth and though my sister was less enthused it was still a good night out.

Macbeth at RSC Stratford-upon-Avon was amazing

There is probably some sort of limit to the number of times I can watch Macbeth but I have not got there yet.

There were some obvious reasons for wanting to see this version. I had wanted to see a production at RSC Stratford-upon-Avon for some time, this production featured Christopher Eccleston and, judging by the posters, it was a modern take on the classical story.

It was also our wedding anniversary and we used this as an excuse to eat at the RSC Rooftop Restaurant beforehand and to begin the meal with a champagne cocktail. It was a lovely start to the evening.

The theatre surprised me a little. I knew that it had been substantially remodelled in recent years and I was expecting something like National Theatre but what I found was more like Globe Theatre (without the pit). Unexpected but also understandable.

I had paid £50 for a seat on the side of the thrust stage and I was pleased with the view of the stage that I had.

The mood was set in the opening scene with the three witches played by young girls dressed for bedtime and carrying baby dolls. It was a striking image and one that recurred with the witches making several appearances during the play and not just when Shakespeare said they should. One of their roles was to help move the props!

Refreshingly the poster was a true reflection of what the production was like. Other theatres please take note (I'm thinking particularly of Almeida).

I am far from word perfect on Macbeth so I cannot be certain how much was changed but a little was and most was not. It was very much Shakespeare and very much Macbeth and also something a little different with things like the cleaner keeping track of the deaths.

Notably the ending was different. Or rather there was an epilogue where the witches returned and made another dark prediction. It was bit of a risk but I think that it worked. Bringing the witches back bookended the production nicely and the new prediction kept the story alive.

A Midsummer Night's Dream at Lyric Hammersmith was hilarious

Two years ago I was tempted to see this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Lyric Hammersmith and loved it so when it came back for a couple of warm up dates before a national tour I was tempted to see it again. My Circle Seat A22 was just three away from where I had been the first time and, remarkably, at £21 was about £14 cheaper.

I had remembered some of the main themes, like the ones given away in the poster of Oberon in a superhero outfit bursting through a wall, and some of the detail but I had forgotten just how funny it was. Obviously I knew that it was going to be funny, that is why I went, but it was much funnier than I remembered and I was laughing almost all the way through.

That started with the announcer who did a stand-up comedy routine to introduce the show with lines like, "I hope that you all have a good night. Not this one, obviously, but one day." He set the tome for the evening and was an excellent warm up session for what followed.

What followed was a Shakespeare / Pantomime mash-up. A lot of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was in there, including a lot of the original language, to which the pantomime added slap-stick, music and some topical jokes. The Shakespeare element was also there in the acting which was excellent all-round and I particularly enjoyed the way the characters interacted when they were not the centre of attention.

And the food fight was just brilliant.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was a cunning combination of culture and comedy.

Sumptuous evening at Tête à Tête Festival 2017

Tête à Tête took a gap year last year and there was no festival in 2016 so I was keen to get back in the groove with Tête à Tête Festival 2017.

This year the Festival was based around RADA Studios (the former Drill Hall) near Goodge Street which would have been ideal if I were still working at Kings Cross but I had changed jobs and was in distant Teddington with a train service disrupted by major works at Waterloo. All that is my thin justification for not getting to the Festival until the final week. Still, better late than never.

The first performance that I saw was Albatross.

This was a work in development that was exploring the mystery and majesty of the albatross using The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as the guide and pulling on other voices, such as Herman Melville.

This was a sparse piece with just two actors, the mariner and the albatross, one other voice off stage and an accordion providing all the music. The accordion also provided some pretty impressive wind noises in a way that I did not know that it was capable of.

One of the creatives behind the piece introduced it by saying that movement was a key part of what they wanted to achieve and this was obvious from the beginning. This worked particularly well when the two actors used two white rods each to summon images of a wild sea.

We were presented with a series of scenes, i.e. the ones they had managed to write and rehearse, that were sequenced in the way that made best sense.

It could have been clunky but was nothing of the sort. While pushing the boundaries of what opera is (one of the things Tête à Tête does) with only a couple of what could be called songs it easily managed to be poetic, musical and engaging. I enjoyed it a lot.

An excellent start to the evening.

The second performance that I saw was The Winter’s Tale, an interpretation of Shakespeare's play. The picture gives a good idea of what it looked like.

This was a fully formed piece lasting about an hour. There was a substantial cast with the musicians stepping into roles when not playing their instruments.

The music was composed by the man who also wrote Albatros and had the same short sharp sounds, more like sound effects than tunes, though that is an oversimplification. The singing was in the same mode with sounds rather than words. The story was told in spoken word.

If I had to classify it I would say that this was a play with a musical accompaniment. That music was constant and was important in describing the mood of the story. As was the movement.

It was a nice version of the story and even though I knew it I was caught in the mood of it as if hearing it for the first time.

Again I would have been pushed to call The Winter’s Tale an opera but it was a fine piece of something and I would happily see it again.

I ended the evening with ‘i’. To be honest, I was at the Festival that day anyway and it was the only thing on at that time so I booked to see it too.

I love it when accidents like that happen. "i" was my highlight of the evening.

"i" was very different again. It was much more like a traditional opera than the other two works and it was a lot weirder and a less structured story too.

It had plenty of songs which sounded like "normal" songs, with a clearly modern twist. The lyrics were heavily repetitive, for example the princess said "I" many many times before she completed the sentence "I am not happy". Musically and lyrically it was an excellent opera.

Making the good something special were the costumes and the touches of humour. The costumes were extraordinary and then some. The story teller who opened the opera by singing on her back is only a clue as to what they wore. Note the makeup too.

"i" was delightful in every way and for every minute and it was all the more pleasing because it was such a surprise.

Adding to the pleasure of the evening were the opportunities to mix with some of the Tête à Tête crew and friends in the breaks. That's why they call it a festival.

Excellent Hamlet at Glyndebourne

I did reasonably well in the ballot this year and got decent seats for all five operas that I applied for.

First up was Hamlet, a brand new opera by composer Brett Dean
and librettist Matthew Jocelyn. I was keen to see this because it was a new opera and, of course, with Hamlet at the core it was a dramatic story.

And Hamlet was the real winner here. I see a version of Hamlet probably at least once a year and some have been very different with, for example, a female lead or being set in a prison in Liverpool, and this version was as dramatic and as powerful as any of them.

This Hamlet, as many of them are, was somewhat abridged to fit into an opera a shade under three hours long and that produced a story with a succession of strong scenes with some of the frippery removed. Of course that frippery still works well in the spoken word through the poetry of the language but was not missed in a musical adaptation.

The strongest scene, and one of the most visually pleasing, was Ophelia's decent into madness as she sung of Hamlet's abandoned love while distributing flowers to everybody.

The music was as different and as startling as I had hoped, aided in no small measure by the unusual layout which included musicians on the top level who added both height and width to the sound. Sitting more-or-less in the middle I was impressed by the stereophonic effect of drum beats moving from left to right.

The tone was set at the very start with an abrupt opening, no promenade by the conductor first, that rumbled more than it sang. The music continued to be a succession of uncommon sounds and while it lacked the tunes that some may have been hoping for it carried the mood superbly and stayed well within the approachable limits of modern music.

The singing was exquisite as is the custom at Glyndebourne. Hamlet has a large supporting cast of strong characters including his father, Gertrude, Laertes, the previously praised Ophelia and, obviously, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who survived the English in this version. All of the soloists, were superb, not just the roles listed earlier. It was a beautiful performance.

Glyndebourne played its usual role in the excellent day with everything from a new pond in the garden, lots of new art and a jug of Pimms from the Long Bar.

It is precisely because of days like this that I keep going to Glyndebourne.

Stunning Richard III at Arcola Theatre

I go to see quite a lot of Shakespeare and I also go to Arcola Theatre quite a lot so this production of Richard III was an obvious temptation, despite having seen a good Richard III at Almeida Theatre less than a year ago. It helped that this version had been getting good reviews, mostly for the performance of Greg Hicks, and also had Paul Kemp in the cast, an actor I knew originally from Orange Tree and who I had managed to speak to after a couple of shows.

As always, the main problem was finding a free evening and I finally managed to find a slot on a Thursday just before it closed. I was on my own, which always makes finding a decent seat easier, and I was able to get a front-row (A23) seat in one of the corners of the stage for a paltry £20.

Intimate spaces make for intimate theatre and Arcola is adept at exploiting that intimacy. Richard III is about a man driven to extremes by the lust for power and being in touching distance of that lust and malevolence was powerful and intoxicating.

Richard III is also very much about one man and so this production relied heavily on the skills of Greg Hicks and, as the quote on the poster shows, it was an excellent performance. The deformity was there but it was the constant menace that defined the character and the play.

Helping the play along was the simple and flexible set and a good ensemble cast. I was a little concerned when Paul Kemp died as Clarence (Richard's brother) at the start of the play and was please to see him return later as Stanley. The rest of the large cast, others of whom also doubled up on roles, were very good too and this was one of the significant pluses of this production.

This was my sort of Shakespeare. The story moved fluidly, the characters were distinct, the set concentrated on the overall mood rather than specific details, and the star starred.

Richard III is one of Shakespeare's more enjoyable plays (in my opinion), which is why I have been to see it so often, and this was possibly the most enjoyable production of it that I have ever seen. Other productions have had bigger budgets and bigger stars (Kevin Spacey was outstanding in 2011) but these have also had bigger stages and the intimacy of Arcola made the drama more tangible.

Well crafted and hilarious Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at The Old Vic

As the poster suggests, the main draw for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Old Vic Theatre‎ was meant to be Daniel Radcliffe but my main reason for going was that this was a play that I had heard of but had not seen and the name Tom Stoppard suggested that I should. I was in the queue for tickets promptly and so managed to get hold of Lilian Baylis Circle (the top level) B23 for £39 which was towards the top end of what I was prepared to pay.

The Old Vic is well situated close to Waterloo Station and so I was able to leave work soon after the end of the working day (5:30pm), but well before anybody else, to get to Culture Grub for 6:30pm where I am recognised as a regular. I went for the Chinese style curry with boiled rice, which I may have had once or twice before, and will have once or twice again.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead entertained from the very start as the two leads undertook the tasks given to them by King Claudius in Hamlet in a bumbling and uncertain manner. So uncertain were they that even they could not work out who was Rosencrantz and who was Guildenstern. Their Mr Bean like antics were a core of the play and that was a very solid core.

On a few occasions Rosencrantz and Guildenstern crossed into the world of Hamlet and we had some familiar scenes from that play embedded into this one. A simple device that was very effective.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern crossed paths a few times with The Player, a harlequin character played with great gusto and aplomb by David Haig, who will always be one of the marks in The Hustle to me. His performance had been described as show stealing in some reviews that I had seen and while I could understand why that had been said I think that the strongest performance was Joshua McGuire as Guildenstern (or was it Rosencrantz?).

The production did a lot to emphasise the fun of the story and the play was two hours of relentless light entertainment that brought many smiles and much laughter, the antithesis to the Hamlet that inspired it.

The Merry Wives at the Rose Theatre was a laugh out loud riot of a play

Whatever the thinking was behind renaming The Merry Wives of Windsor to just The Merry Wives it managed to confuse me and so I almost missed a Shakespeare play being performed in my nearest theatre.

The Rose Theatre is still pretty terrible at publicity, obviously they have either not read my previous moans on this subject or they have chosen to ignore them, and so it was rather late in the day that I discovered that this was on and despite the new name was with the original Shakespeare text.  This is a play that I was always going to want to see at a theatre that I try to see as many things as I can to support it and it frustrates me that I find out about some of the shows there very late and it worries me that I am missing some altogether. They seem to put all their publicity effort into their productions and little into anything else.

I have booked to see something else there in April, Ockham's Razor Tipping Point, and I also found out about that show by accident and I saw nothing to promote it at the theatre on this evening, just a few weeks before the show.

I suspect that I was lucky with a cancellation and I managed to buy a seat in my preferred area, Stalls Row A Seat 44 at £25, just a couple of days before the performance. Being Good Friday would not have helped but I suspect that other people were misled by the publicity or did not see it and the audience was fairly small with the central section almost full but few people on either side. This was a shame as both the theatre and this production deserve better and a Shakespearean comedy should have been ideal fare for the Easter holiday period.

I had not seen The Merry Wives (of Windsor) before but I had seen the operatic version, Falstaff by Verdi at Glyndebourne, so I knew something of the story. It mixes a comedy about love and a straight love story.

In the main story Falstaff tries it on with two married women and writes them identical love letters. Unfortunately they are close friends and share the letters, they then plan to get their revenge by staging incidents where Falstaff would come to see one of them then a husband would return unexpectedly and he'd leave by an ignominious and embarrassing method. Meanwhile one of the husbands, using an alternative name, was asking Falstaff for his advice about his suspicions over his wife's infidelity only to have Falstaff boast about the assignations he had lined up with his wife.

In the other lesser story a young heiress is promised by her two parents to two different suitors but is in love with a third man who is earnest but penniless (relatively).

The two stories collide in the final scene and, no surprise, everything ends happily. But it was not the ending that mattered it was the journey there and that was a journey rich with bawdy humour and strong personalities.

The production did lots of things well and cleverly used the same simple set throughout with just a few tables and chairs coming and going to denote the different scenes. A great exception to the no-prop rule was the use of a forklift to carry out the basket of washing in which Falstaff was hiding after the two men charged with the task were unable to lift it.

Making it all happen delightfully was a large cast headed by Barry Rutter as Sir John Falstaff, he also directed it. The Merry Wives, Supporting him Nicola Sanderson and Becky Hindley were splendid as they planned and set their traps for Falstaff. The rest of the cast all played their parts well in teasing the most from the situations and the personalities.

The Merry Wives was a laugh out loud riot of a play which entertained mightily and in so many ways. The perfect antidote to a wet and windy Bank Holiday.

A riotous A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Lyric Hammersmith

Having rediscovered the Lyric Hammersmith with Herons I was quick to get back there to see A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shakespeare is quite a pull for me but I had seen Dream not that long ago, and a musical adaptation too, so it needed to be something special to get me to see yet another version and YouTube convinced me that this was special. The short clips showed Oberon in his superhero outfit with a large "O" on the front and were heavy with slapstick. It also helped that this was a return of a popular show.

I decided to work at home that day and finished promptly to eat (and drink) in the cafe there. As on my previous visit I had the excellent veggie burger and a bottle of a craft ale. Neither was cheap but both justified their price.

I chose a seat in the top price bracket, Circle A18 £35. This was just two seats away from where I sat for Herons so I knew that the view would be good. One reason why I always log my seat number and take a picture of the view is that it helps me to choose my seat the next time that I go to a theatre I am not that familiar with.

The show opened with an Irish announcer setting the scene. This quickly set the tone and the mood; he made some very topical and political (anti-Tory) jokes, swore at some young men in the front row for talking, and explained that Dream had a play within a play like Shakespeare's other play The Matrix.

What followed was an incredible amount of fun that remained very true to the original while embellishing it with lots of visual humour. As an example of this, the tears in the walls, roof and floor show where characters made unexpected entrances and exits.

Also added to the original script were some pieces of music and some colourful language. The age guidance was 14+ but the girls behind me looked quite a bit short of that. One of them asked there mother, "What's that?", when Puck picked up a condom packet and that's a conversation that might be a little awkward. I'm not sure that they got the hung like a donkey references either.

And then there was an all-cast food fight that got some of the audience involved too.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was imaginative in design and skillful in execution. It was a Shakespeare for the modern age that I loved immensely and recommend heartily (for those aged 14+). 

Macbeth at the Young Vic was a bold experiment that did not quite work

London theatre must be doing well as I have not had the opportunity to see The Scottish Play for many years.

The last time I remember seeing Macbeth was (at least) twenty years ago at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, though I did listen to the BBC Radio 3 version last year and I also saw the opera at Glyndebourne in 2010.

I was aware that the Young Vic were doing a modern take on Macbeth but I was a little weary and did not book it immediately. I loved some modern versions of Shakespeare, such as Hamlet and Lear, so this did appeal to me. The doubts came from my recent experience of the Young Vic were some productions, e.g. Streetcar named Desire, seemed unnecessarily complicated while others, e.g. Happy Days, were excellent.

In the end the deciding factor was work with a bit of help from fate. Work was not going well and rather than rant loudly to my boss I thought I would go to the theatre instead, something to calm me down. Macbeth was an option and there were a few single seats left for that evening's performance so I bought one, Downstairs D5 for £27.50.

The play did not start until 7:30pm so that have me plenty of time to walk down to Southwark from Kings Cross, have by usual Chinese style curry at Culture Grub and then get a pint of something brown and yet to drink at the Young Vic. You are allowed to take drinks in with you so I did, mostly because there were no seats in the bar and the theatre opened very early at 7pm.

The seat was a little to one side but I could see all the way down the funnel stage so I was OK. It did not hurt that the person in the seat in front of me did not turn up, the show was sold out but there were a few no-shows. I managed to get my usual shot from my seat despite the close attention of the staff eager to stop photography. The official photo above gives a better idea of what the stage looked like.

My first thought was of Richard III at the Old Vic which had a similar dark set with a series of doors along either side of the stage.

This was a strange Macbeth. It was a new version but I did not spot any changes in the text, nor would I expect to, until I checked afterwards for one specific thing (more on that later). I assume that several other pieces were cut out to make Macbeth more approachable and to make room for the dancing.

Yes, dancing. The first hint of this came when the three sisters first appeared and the prophecies came with modern dance moves, hands around the head and that sort of thing. They were also wearing body coloured body stockings which was another departure from the norm.

There was much more dancing later on especially in a ball scene that involved everybody and was quite fun. Less relevant were the duets between Macbeth's henchmen, their dancing was good but I just could not see the point of it.

The sound and lighting were far more successful in defining the mood and I loved the way that they varied, especially the volume with moments of loud music contrasting against soft speech.

The play is called Macbeth but I think that Lady Macbeth is the main character as she is the one who urges him on when the early doubts come and once that first fateful step is made he is doomed. This Lady Macbeth, Anna Maxwell Martin, was suitably scary not least because she looked like a primary school teacher. She led the rest of the cast well and they followed her admirably with no weaknesses and plenty of strengths.

The staging was light. All the doors were used frequently, the final section slid sideways a few times to show us other rooms and the central section lifted to become a table. What the staging did it did well enough but I missed what it did not do, e.g. there was no visual hint of Great Birnam Wood.

Surprisingly the ending fell a little flat. I heard other people say that on the way out so I checked the play text and saw that the closing speech had been chopped. I have no idea why and the absence of this epilogue made the ending rather abrupt.

My first reaction was, that despite the blunt ending, it was an exciting and thrilling experience, as you would expect Macbeth to be, and I was even considering going to see it again. On reflection, and I like to reflect on things, many of thrills came from the music and dancing and they were somewhat ephemeral, like cream cakes, and the sugar rush was short-lived. The core of the play was still one of Shakespeare's best plays but I was not convinced that the additional elements added anything to the tragedy.

Macbeth was fun, a lot of fun, and I am happy with that even if there was not enough in there to tempt me back for more.

King Charles III at Richmond Theatre was sensational

I had heard good things about King Charles III in its previous incarnations so when it headed off on tour and passed through Richmond I thought that I would give it a go, despite not really knowing anything about it or being that interested in the monarchy.

I settled for the top level of the theatre, which is not always open so it was obviously expected to sell well, and I got Upper Circle Row A Seat 12 for a wallet-friendly £25. The view from there was a little vertiginous but otherwise fine.

It would be simple to say that King Charles III was a modern take on Shakespeare but that would be to mask its brilliance.

Being like Shakespeare is no mean achievement in itself but this was Shakespeare with the benefit of centuries more theatre to learn from. From the very opening, a haunting march composed by Jocelyn Pook for the funeral of QEII, the play reeked of professionalism and talent.

Having Robert Powell play King Charles III helped.

The story was complex and intriguing. A topical review of the legislation of newspapers led to a confrontation between crown and state with complications coming from, amongst other things, a hugely ambitious Princess of Cambridge, the ghost of another princess and Harry's latest girlfriend. It had all the political intrigue your would expect from a Shakespearean history and, like his, this one had dollops of truth and masses of embellishment.

The dialogue was mostly Shakespearean too, both in structure and vocabulary with some rhyming couplets thrown in for good measure. Some modern language broke the mood such as when Kate let slip the f-bomb. The two modes worked well together and the play managed to be both historical and modern.

There was more to the plot than in most Shakespearean histories and I was engrossed from start to finish.

Everything about the play was just right without being too smug about it. It was sensational.

Dark and innovative Henry V at the Union Theatre

I have seen a few Shakespeare adaptations at small theatres in the last few years and they have all been good or better, including two (Lear and Play of Thrones) at the Union Theatre, so there was never really any choice to make about going to see Henry V.

Like Lear, Henry V had a woman in the lead role only this time it had women in all of the roles. That was clearly unusual and interesting but that was not the main reason that I wanted to see it. More important to me were the reputations of Shakespeare and the Union Theatre and it helped that I has seen some positive comments posted on Twitter, my main source of information on current shows.

Because work was messing me about regarding where I worked and how long I had to work for (working on bids always always means late nights, which is a sign that we do not manage them well) it was a late decision to go on this Thursday evening. So late that the online booking system had closed and I had to head to the theatre to get a ticket. The online system had indicated availability earlier in the day so I was not too worried. Besides, the worst case is that they would be sold out in which case I would still have had a good walk from Kings Cross to Southwark.

It took me about 45 minutes to walk to the theatre from the office, a walk I had done several times by then, and I got there around 6:45pm only a quarter of an hour after the box office opened. I paid my £15 (a bargain) and was pleased to be given a ticket number of less than ten which meant that I would be in the first group of people allowed in.

I also had time to pop across the road for a much appreciated pint (it had been a hot day for the walk) and my usual nachos to provide some calories.

Going into the Union Theatre is always exciting. The stage area is hidden by a wall with entrances either side and it is not until you walk though one of those entrances that you know how the stage is laid out and then a quick decision has to be made on where to sit.

This time the seating was U-shaped and I took a seat in the front row half way down the right side of the U. In the centre of the stage was a table with candles and a crown and around the stage was a line of folding chairs. The open end of the U was hazed with mist made spookier by low lighting. The cast were hidden in there chanting.

Once we were settled they came into the central area, some standing and others taking advantage of the chairs.

Henry V, despite the battles, is a play dominated by speech and with little action. Shakespeare recognises this an opens with an almost apologetic narration explaining that great things will happen but we will need our imaginations to see them. This production recognised the play's limitations too and instilled life into the long dialogues with lots of movement, plenty of direct eye contact with the audience and some clever lighting. They also made the French ambassador wear a clown's mask and sing Frère Jacques.

I seemed to be man-marked by a Welsh woman, look you, who looked at me a lot and spent some time standing on the chair directly in front of me leaving me to contemplate her toes which drew the thought that they should have been painted, preferably black, as they had been in Duncton Wood.

The play followed the lines that it had the last time that I saw it though some of the language was a little different and a little more profane. Essentially the play is a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of Henry V in which everybody tells us how great he is and he does great things. The greatest great thing was beating the French at Agincourt when vastly outnumbered and with the loss of only 25 men against 10,000 on the French side. This is not entirely accurate historically.

There was a rawness and a darkness to the play that I liked. This was reinforced by both the low level of lighting and the black boiler suits that the cast wore but most of it came from the strong and harsh delivery of the words.

Henry V is far from my favourite Shakespeare play but it is a Shakespeare play and this production captured its mood neatly and enjoyably.