Catch-up

Getting to some older posts...

From Australia, The Spectator takes a look at both productions and how they hold up under single-gender casting. The Winter's Tale poses some reservations, but

On the other hand, the final scene, one of the most difficult and most moving things in the whole of Shakespeare, is beyond praise. Ed Hall articulates it flawlessly with great stillness and sweeping surprise and depth of feeling. It reminds us that, whatever its flaws, Propeller has an empathy for Shakespeare that carries it across gulfs and up mountains.

Furthermore, "The Propeller Henry V is finer still and the production exhibits a ruthless brilliance of conception that is utterly consistent with the masculine prowess and muscle of this supremely warlike play, drenched in glamour and blood."

Writing for his blog, David Zampatti calls Henry V "the best Henry V I'm ever likely to see." Dugald Bruce-Lockhart " looks and sounds like he was born to throw himself headlong at an enemy, and that’s what his men, and we, react to" and he is "s surrounded by actors made for their parts. Chris Myles and Dominic Thorburn, Exeter and Westmoreland, look, sound and feel like men who command divisions, Nicholas Asbury, as Mountjoy the French Herald, a man who stands for his liege. As Fluellen, Tony Bell is as charismatic and shifty as was his Autolycus in the Winter's Tale."

As for The Winter's Tale, it is "a gorgeous looking, beautifully spoken and often riotously staged production." Robert Hands offers an "outstanding Leontes [who] raves in his magnificent derangement" and Tony Bell is "as appealing and appalling a rogue as Shakespeare ever slid onto a stage." Even so, the call for female actors is once again sounded.

Before they got to New Zealand, Stuff had a chat with Ed Hall on the settings of the plays, how both address questions of honour and (of course) a bit about the all-male aspect.

This Is Kent previews Propeller's arrival in Canterbury this past weekend.

Reviewing for The Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish muses that "while the lusty commitment of this band of brothers isn’t in doubt, the value of the project, in its current gender-biased form, perhaps is." Even with that, Henry V picks up four stars and The Winter's Tale three, while the focus remains firmly on the value of an all-male company.  [e]