12 variations on a prop 1 garage There is stuff you expect to find in a garage. A car (an Audi, registration FE13 MXP). Metal shelving, peg board. Strip lighting that tints everything stark and queasy. A toolbox. Gaffer tape. An Amazon delivery box (there’s always a swoosh-marked Amazon box). They’re all here in Vicki Mortimer’s design. There’s also a strap-on. 2 set-up The plot of … [Read more...]
She thought
‘Could you tell these were by women choreographers?’ asked my neighbour during an interval of English National Ballet’s She Said. Good question. How would you know?Could you tell that the opera I saw the following evening – Lucia di Lammermoor – was directed by a woman, Katie Mitchell? Good question – but impossible. Start slapping labels on aesthetic qualities – feminine/masculine – and you’re … [Read more...]
Change the world, one hero at a time
From dude to dodo is a trick of vowels and imagination. Maybe, if we’re tired of seeing men dominate our stages, we need to exercise our imaginations, especially when it comes to casting. Unexpectedly, Shakespeare is leading the way. Shakespeare productions swapped gender from the word go, with the all-male Elizabethan companies. Sarah Bernhardt, Angela Winkler and Frances de la Tour have since … [Read more...]
On the brink
Katie Mitchell directs The Cherry Orchard It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there. I haven’t seen Katie Mitchell’s polarising 2071 at London’s Royal Court – an animated TED warning about falling off the climate change cliff – but the honed steel of the director’s Cherry Orchard at the Young Vic makes a similar argument with baleful panache. Snowclouds of cherry blossom, a backdrop shimmer … [Read more...]