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PHOENIX RIGHT AGAIN!
There we are, it was a very small blog, but now the ‘Mitchelgate’ story is proving what dangers we are starting to face, or always did and will. Click Here In fact our point was not exactly with...
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MICHEL ROUX RUES THE DAY THE BBC FORGOT HOW TO BE MASTERCHEFS
Have you seen the news that Mr Masterchef himself, the ever charming and supremely talented Michel Roux has just fallen out with the increasingly tasteless and cynical BBC over continuing tv culinary...
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GRACE UNDER KICKSTARTER FIRE OR ANOTHER STORY TRYING TO COME OUT
Hello all, I’m attempting to wrestle with showing grace under Kickstarter fire, not to mention bad hair days, and so sorry a blog has become a tedious repetition of links and reminders. I’m a little...
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WELCOME TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF UNWANTED OBJECTS!
He calls it, with a certain peasant drollery, The Society For The Protection of Unwanted Objects, otherwise known as the Emporium. Much a theme and place to scribble about here at Phoenix Ark Press...
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WITH SO MUCH HARM, COME THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE!
UKIP achieving in the polls, mutterings of the final break up of the BBC, yawning questions about the reality of recovery or the direction of this country, a feeling that social differentials have...
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HAPPY NEW YEAR AND A SPECIAL TOAST TO CJ SANSOM!
Happy New Year everyone and much hope for 2015, but a special toast today to the writer CJ Sansom and his wonderful Shardlake detective stories. Set under Henry VIII and covering the exploits of the...
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THE SHAKESPEARE BLOG – SOUTHWARK, SPIES AND SHAKESPEARE’S MISSING WOMEN
One of the great problems about Shakespeare, and building up a realistic and factually correct picture of Southwark too, where his brother Edmund died, is working with such little evidence. That...
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THE SHAKESPEARE BLOG – SOUTHWARK, SHOES, SCANDALS AND SADDLERS
One of the most famous of all Shakespeare’s soliloquies must be Henry V’s immortal “St Cripsin’s Day” speech, but few know its special significance to a Southwark audience, in particular at the Globe....
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THE SHAKESPEARE BLOG – THE STRANGE CASE OF EDMUND SHAKESPEARE AND MR JONSON!
One of the less succesful moments in the search through St Saviour’s records for Edmund Shakespeare, his immortal brother William and Southwark in general was when I stumbled on a payment in the...
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THE SHAKESPEARE BLOG – THE MYSTERY AND MAGIC OF RESEARCH
An American friend has just asked, in this very free form Shakespeare and London blog, what it is like doing the research itself, in the backrooms and the stacks of great libraries? A worthy...
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MUCH ADO ABOUT THE LOVELY RSC
I must confess to a dastardly crime against the Theatre, or myself, in not staying for the second half of Loves Labours Lost at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Perhaps it was the difficulty of the play,...
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MEETING IVANA TRUMP
I met Ivana Trump once, it was in a little London art gallery, I think Cork Street, and remember well wondering about this botoxed, attractive, semi glamorous Eastern European woman and how celebrity,...
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A FAIL OF TWO CITIES – REVIEW
It’s heart may be in the best of places, but it’s only that magical Open Air setting that just about saves Matthew Dunster’s adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities from being the worst of times. Three...
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JO AllAN PR, REGENT’S PARK OPEN AIR AND WHY THEATRES START TO HANG THEMSELVES!
If the terrible production of a Tale of Two Cities is anything to go by (review below), something is wrong at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. My own personal experience of it was not just having to...
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A LITTLE CHAT WITH MATTHEW DUNSTER AND ONE UP FOR THE GLOBE
Well, Matthew Dunster redeemed himself for me last night, after his brutalization of Dickens at Regent’s Park Open Air, with his triumphant direction of Much Ado About Nothing at The Globe. So, after...
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MICHELLE TERRY COMES TO THE GLOBE, AMID THE SILENT TEMPEST!
Well, when Press people suddenly disappear, and there has been long standing controversy about the resignation of the Globe’s Artistic Director Emma Rice too, who goes to The Old Vic, even coming fresh...
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KING LEAR – REVIEW
Nancy Meckler’s quirky production of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy at The Globe somehow fails to reach the heights of Kevin Mcnally’s deeply moving and highly original portrayal of King Lear. In a...
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WAITING FOR GODOT – REVIEW – A VERY WORTHY HOMECOMING
This is a beautiful little production of one of the seminal plays of the Twentieth Century, the programme probably rightly claims changed the face of theatre forever, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for...
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A FAREWELL LETTER TO SIR PETER HALL – RIP
Dear Sir Peter, I wrote you a personal letter over 30 years ago, you were kind enough to reply to, and so generously to say that it was one of the most acute you’d ever read on Shakespearean acting...
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BOUDICA – REVIEW
“By Jupiter’s arsehole”, but I came out of the first half of Tristan Bernay’s new play at The Globe, Boudica, feeling confused. Was this a masterstroke, to commission a bold new work with such obvious...
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