Saturday 7 April 2012

"All's Will, Ends Well"

Being Shakespeare has transferred to New York and it is fascinating to see that the critics have a completely different take on the show from that of their counterparts who have seen it across the UK and in the West End. They all love it, but they all focus on the Authorship Question: New York Times ("Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, the defense calls Simon Callow"), The New York Post ("All's Will, Ends Well"), New York Daily News, Washington Post ("makes it cool again to be smart"), Huffington Post ("restoring King Shakespeare"). The show never directly addresses it, though the programme note confronts it head-on. We didn't create the piece with the authorship dispute in mind, though the title under which it was first staged, The Man from Stratford, was a deliberate poke in the eye of the doubters. And last year's risible-if-good-to-look-at movie Anonymous, which maybe didn't bomb quite so much in the US as it did in the UK, has made it timely - "Eat your heart out, Roland Emmerich," as one of those smart Yankee reviewers puts it.

2 comments:

  1. Dr Bates the Washington Post review is not really a Wash Post review. It's a mere wire service story by the AP, Associated Press, so maybe correct this on your blog. Your post led me to believe that the play had been reviewed by the prestigious Wash Post and this is not true. It was a mere Ap wire story carried by the Wash Post. Please fix. Accuracy counts.

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  2. and that AP writer wrote ''Take that, Roland Emmerich, “thou crusty botch of nature.” NOT ''"Eat your heart out, Roland Emmerich," as one of those smart Yankee reviewers puts it. ''... can you read sir?

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