My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
'... we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.' I loved Shakespeare when I was at school, despite my English teachers. They were not the enthusiastic pedagogues of today, striving to make the bard accessible because every child mattered. My teachers were dry pecking birds who wanted to perpetuate a class system in …
Continue reading Sublime Shakespeare: ‘Tis Beauty Truly Blent
Lots of people tell me they don't get Samuel Beckett. Perhaps they have stared at a script in a Drama lesson at school, or watched a little bit performed out of context on film. My own first taste of Beckett was watching a play called 'En Attendant Godot', aged 18, all in French, in a …
Continue reading Best of Samuel Beckett: Mark Rylance hamming it up. (Part 1)
When Franca Rame died in 2013, aged 84, the Italians at her funeral remembered her by wearing red clothes with red roses,as she had requested. She was a superstar, grieved in much the same way as recently departed cultural icons have been remembered after their deaths, surrounded by tributes and superlatives. In this country, Rame's husband and professional …
Continue reading Franca Rame: behind the great man there was a superstar
Although audiences looking for a more faithful adaptation, without additions or subtractions, may feel Lyndsey Turner's Hamlet isn't complete or fulfilling, there are plenty of reasons why this Cumberbatch Hamlet hits the mark. Benedict Cumberbatch himself is a likeable, accessible Hamlet, his madness arising from his grief. This is entirely clear, easily marked out from the …
That quintessence of dust 