ShakespeareScene

444 years after Shakespeare’s birth, specialist publishing company, Ashokan International Ltd is publishing a brand new magazine entitled ShakespeareScene.

The twice yearly colour magazine will be launched in mid-May and will be a well designed publication for the public and Shakespeare enthusiasts around the world. It will include news about the times of Shakespeare, interviews and articles plus a great listing of productions and festivals due to take place over the summer
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Available from specialist outlets in the UK and Borders and also from its web-site www.shakespearescene.com

Verdi vs. Shakespeare in a ‘Macbeth’ Showdown: Call It a Draw

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
New York Times

There are two gripping productions of “Macbeth” in New York right now.

The darkly theatrical, cinematic staging directed by Rupert Goold and starring Patrick Stewart opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and is now at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway.

Then there is the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s operatic adaptation of that Shakespeare drama, a breakthrough work for the young Verdi, first performed in 1847. The Met’s grim, boldly updated production by the director Adrian Noble, which opened in October, returns on Friday with a new cast, led by the baritone Carlos Álvarez, the soprano Hasmik Papian as Lady Macbeth, and, in the crucial role of Banquo, the formidable bass René Pape. James Levine conducts.

Henry VI: World-class Orgy of Gore and Humour

Charles Spencer reviews Henry VI pts 1,2, 3 by the RSC at the Roundhouse, Camden

By common consent, these early plays by Shakespeare aren't a patch on Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Indeed, scholars are still divided over just how much of the Henry VI trilogy Shakespeare actually wrote.

Henry VI brings a sense of shivery mystery to the stage

But there is no feeling one is watching crude prentice work in Michael Boyd's knock-out production of this trilogy about England's bloody Wars of the Roses, a thrilling all-day orgy of gore-dripping violence, gallows humour and craven betrayal.

Were the World Mine: Shaking up Shakespeare

Were the World Mine closes the 10th Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on a musical, fantastical note. The movie, which director Tom Gustafson expanded from his short film Fairies, takes the familiar scenarios of high school angst and adolescent crushes and gives them a wonderful musical spin, complete with elaborate sets and choreography.

Cleverly borrowing from A Midsummer's Night Dream in ways Shakespeare could have never imagined, the movie centers on Timothy (Tanner Cohen), a gay student at a private school who harbors a secret crush on rugby star Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker).

With ‘Cardenio’ the Shakespeare Scholar Stephen Greenblatt Brushes Up His Playwriting - New York Times

With ‘Cardenio’ the Shakespeare Scholar Stephen Greenblatt Brushes Up His Playwriting

THERE are classes on Shakespeare at Harvard University that students are happy to see dismissed early, especially when the spring weather grows as enticing as Titania’s bower, or the gossips at Lamont, the undergraduate library, have some unusually esoteric knowledge to impart.
Not when Stephen Greenblatt is teaching.

One of the country’s top Shakespeare scholars, Mr. Greenblatt, the Cogan university professor of the humanities, enjoys rock star status on campus. His lectures are legendary, and gaining admission to one of his limited-enrollment seminars is an academic brass ring.

But on a Tuesday afternoon last month he had to cut short his seminar on “Hamlet” to be on time for his maiden voyage into making theater. Professor Greenblatt, 64, has written his first play, “Cardenio,” a collaboration with Charles Mee, and was expected at the opening rehearsal.

Theater: Many faces of Macbeth | csmonitor.com

Theater: Many Faces of Macbeth

Despite its timelessness, Shakespeare's "Macbeth" has proven difficult to precisely date. Scholars disagree, but it's presumed that the play was written between 1603 and 1606. This year, however, a slew of innovative new stagings of "the Scottish Play," each with wildly different visions of the piece – one turns the famous witches into male monsters, one depicts them as ghostly nurses, another does away with them altogether – are proving that "Macbeth" is easier to update.

Lose the language and you lose Shakespeare | Books | Guardian Unlimited

Lose the language and you lose Shakespeare

Shakespeare Patron Emerges, Ghostly - New York Times

Shakespeare Patron Emerges, Ghostly - New York Times

Supermarket Shakespeare

O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
That would be the '20 per cent off' leg of lamb in the freezer section Hamlet is trying to defrost in time for Sunday lunch... And that's pretty much the kind of thing you can expect to bump into if you go to Supermarket Shakespeare in Lee Green this weekend and the beginning of next week.

Teatro Vivo are presenting Supermarket Shakespeare, exactly what it sounds like as the six-strong team of actors will be performing Shakespeare in a supermarket. They are going to be in the Lee Green branch of Sainsbury's, adding extra value to your shopping as they perform extracts from the bard's sonnets in the loose produce, biscuits, dairy and fish aisles.