The President's Husband's Drama Reviews

Yaël Farber. The clue is in the name, and its German root, meaning 'colour'. Farber is a colorist. Rather than approaching Shakespeare through literary analysis, she wields hues, images and symbols. She directs as if she were a painter. Like her thrilling Macbeth  at the Almeida, her Winter's Tale  is, first and foremost, a feast for the senses. And it's a hearty meal. This production boasts movement and dance pulsing with pagan might, constant rhythmic music like electro-Stravinsky, elemental powers of earth, air, fire and water, the blue of a winter sky, and the gold of a summer solstice. Above it all, suspended like a watchful deity, is a gigantic moon. I've seen moons on stage before - projections, cutouts in cycloramas, beams of twinkling light. But I've never seen one like this: cold, old, beautiful, vast, with a surface slowly evolving under wisps of ever-changing shadow. If ever a set was a symbol, this is it. That moon stands for change and femininity, ...

Things you don’t need to know before seeing 4:48 Psychosis at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon: 1. That this is the original cast, who premiered the play 25 years ago. 2. That 4:48am is the time (pinpointed by a study conducted at Nottingham University) when suicidal ideation is at its strongest. 3. That the playwright, Sarah Kane, committed suicide at the age of 28 after writing it. The question is, does it help to know these things? Does the knowledge that this is not just a creative stab at clinical depression but a true howl from the depths give it a degree of authenticity that it would otherwise have lacked? Does the presence of Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter confer a sense of commemoration on the silver anniversary of the author’s tragic death? The answer, I think, is that the play – and the production – are strong and authentic enough to penetrate the emotional carapaces of the most sceptical of observers, even without the heart-breaking context hovering, u...