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‘Unfunny echo of today’s sexual & social injustices’: MEASURE FOR MEASURE – Donmar Warehouse ★★★

In London theatre, Opinion, Plays, Reviews by Carole WoddisLeave a Comment

There’s every reason why Josie Rourke should have chosen Measure for Measure to direct in her final season as the Donmar’s artistic director. Anyone with half an ear to public events in the arena of gender relations and abuse of power in the past two years would recognise its extraordinary pertinence.

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Mark Shenton views the week of news, openings & radical overhauls of Shakespeare in the West End, Broadway & beyond

In Awards, Broadway, Features, London theatre, Musicals, Opinion, Plays, Regional theatre, Reviews, Touring by Mark ShentonLeave a Comment

Mark Shenton offers the week’s news, reviews, quotes and tweets in theatre from both sides of the Atlantic, including an interview with Sonia Friedman, reviews of Shakespeare in three different abbreviated versions, and a YouTube star appearing on Broadway.

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MEASURE FOR MEASURE – Young Vic

In London theatre, Opinion, Plays, Reviews by Edward SeckersonLeave a Comment

Shakespeare’s strangest and nastiest play is a kind of black farce where the reckless dash to redemption makes the redemption itself – forgiveness, reconciliation, all is sort of forgiven – seem like an afterthought. Joe Hill-Gibbins is having none of it and dives into the play’s intractable vision of a city, a culture, a world, caught in a spiral of skewed morality with almost indecent relish. It’s all noise and garage music and a tangle of exhausted blow-up sex dolls. And it moves so fast (1 hour 50, no interval) that the lines between sin and retribution and perpetually blurred.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE – Young Vic

In London theatre, Plays, Reviews by Libby PurvesLeave a Comment

Sex is at this play’s core. But it’s not sexy in the slightest. It’s a means of leverage, abuse, it’s a crime, a threat. Each of the 50 or so plastic sex dolls strewn across the stage make you want to stew in hot bleach. You can taste the immorality of this Vienna.