What are they all about?
Hamlet is Shakespeare's classic study into student life: when his uncle kills his father and weds his mother, cheating him of his birthright, Hamlet decides to take a gap year to sort things out. However his friends spy on him and he goes mad. He kills his lover's father and has to spend time in England! His lover goes mad and drowns herself. Then he kills her brother who in turn kills him but not before he sees his mother poisoned at which point he kills her recently widowed husband. The good news is he doesn't live long enough to see his country run by Norwegians! The bad new is that he fails to get some important course-work in on time and only gets
a Desmond! - OK that last bit is Harding not Shakespeare but you get the idea.
Twelfth Night is by Shakespeare again and is just about music and food: a sort of Saturday Morning Kitchen with a musical interlude from James Blunt. Actually I was in it - I played Feste: I was so good that when the local rag came to review it ("loved everyone" sort of review) they didn't even mention me! Bitter? Have you ever seen
Theatre of Blood starring Vincent Price? Anyway you can bet that reviewers will remember to mention Derek Jacobi in this one: he will be playing Malvolio.
Ivanov is by Anton Chekhov. Tom Stoppard has penned this new version and it stars Kenneth Branagh as Mr I
Uneducated as I am I know very little about this one so let me read from the official blurb
Once a man of limitless promise, Ivanov is plunged into debt. His marriage is in crisis, and his evenings are spent negotiating loans, avoiding love affairs and fighting to resist the small town jealousies and intrigues which threaten to engulf his life... an explosive portrait of a man plagued with self-doubt and despair which vividly captures the electrifying atmosphere of Russia on the brink of change.
Sounds like me when I did Twelfth Night at the Abbey Theatre!
Madame de Sade (or Renée as her friends and family call her) is the play that seems to be receiving the most interest - I guess because of the subject matter and the relatively unknown nature of the story - or at least the unknown nature of the story behind the headlines.
Madame de Sade (played by Judi Dench) remained vehemently devoted to her husband, the notorious Marquis de Sade, despite his lurid escapades and licentious behaviour and Yukio Mishima's poetic masterpiece brings to life this fascinating story told through the eyes of six remarkable women.
It is set in Paris as it hurtles towards violent revolution so you could see
Les Miserables on the same break if you fancied a themed weekend!
