I have, yes - I very much enjoyed her discussion of the various productions. The 1994 is (to date) my favourite in a number of ways - it isn’t perfect, but it’s beautiful. The production I want to see (but involves a lot of travel!) in Robin Phillips’ 1975 for the Ontario Festival. One day!

Have decided against it. I’ll only come away feeling annoyed at the whole production again, and driving grumpy at night isn’t a great idea.

Yes!
The opening scene is completely rewritten with text from sonnet 21, Much Ado and others. Two scenes for Mariana are added with Othello, Aphra Ben, MQoS and some other stuff (exeuntmagazine.substack.com/p/post-show-... for an overview).

I think I’ve watched the recording of the 1994 RSC version about 14 times 👀
But I mainly need to see whether they actually changed “their perch and not their terror” to “their perch and not their pleasure”, or if TM was having a bad night. (My life consists of Measure, Lupton, and making books…)

I was hoping Cyrano wouldn’t be sold out so that I could head down and make a decision on the spot, but that idea has been scuppered by sensible people buying all the tickets.

I saw it in previews as well (from the bar seats!), and found it such an intimate experience - I felt complicit in the violence, it was great. I’m somewhat confused by the majority of the reviews (especially given those for another RSC show that doesn’t even touch this! 👀) Never trust the critics!

Just out of the matinee, and it’s the best Shakespeare I’ve seen this year I think. Captivating.

It was an enjoyable night of lowbrow comedy. It’s not the best production I’ve seen, but it was very funny (which is always a good start!). Feste and Maria were the standouts for me, but a crowd pleasing show from the whole cast. It was my first time at the Globe (shocking!).

It was Twelfth Night!

Yes, that review pretty much summed up my take on it. I might have worded it a bit more strongly (“ramming a single message down our throats with a sledgehammer” perhaps). But the delicate balance and complexity of the original is very much lost.

I suspect if I’d gone in without 30 years of love for the play (and having seen an awful lot of productions and recordings of it) I would have enjoyed it far more!

I like the picture painted by the lowlifes of the effects that changes at a governmental level have across the spectrum of society, but what do I know… I think adding text from other plays to dictate the motivations of characters, and making them far less complex, was a travesty.

It was, yes. It got a lot of good reviews, however the one I felt closest to what I felt while watching it was from Whatsonstage (3*). The cast were great, they worked amazingly with what they were given. But what they were given was… subpar.

I may have whiplashed slightly when PH was mentioned! 6 years of studiously avoiding those letters, and then his name pops up in the book! ❤️