Theatre review: Antony & Cleopatra(Shakespeare's Globe)

One of my A'Level English Shakespeares, and not one I've ever loved, Antony & Cleopatra had my favourite-ever production at the Globe. The latest revival's publicity makes a point of the fact that it's ten years since it was last seen there, but that wasn't the original intention: It was first announced that Deaf actress and familiar face at the venue Nadia Nadarajah would play the Queen of Egypt in 2020, in what was also meant to be that year's Michelle Terry-starrer in an unannounced role. I guess the Artistic Director might have been eyeing up Antony, but my bet would have been Cleopatra's chief lady in waiting Charmian, allowing her to translate from British Sign Language to English and back. If my guess was right then the four-year delay caused by lockdown made for a different high concept for Blanche McIntyre's production, which still stars Nadarajah as Cleopatra, but has her joined by a number of other D/deaf performers for a fully bilingual production.

Stage-to-screen review: Grounded

I didn't so much miss Deafinitely Theatre's revival of Grounded when it played at Park Theatre as actively choose not to see it: Not out of any dislike for the company, but because it was only two years since I'd seen the UK premiere of George Brant's monologue, and I knew there was no chance I could realistically watch another version without comparing it to Lucy Ellinson's extraordinary performance. Even another five years down the line it's hard to feel entirely unbiased towards Paula Garfield's production, despite it inevitably having its own identity because it makes the one-woman show a two-hander, or perhaps two one-woman shows happening concurrently: As part of Deafinitely's aim to produce shows that can be enjoyed together by D/deaf and hearing audiences, Nadia Nadarajah performs The Pilot's lines in BSL, while Charmaine Wombwell provides the English language version.

Theatre review: Midnight Movie

The Royal Court has long been at the forefront of trying to put the online world on stage – most recently Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner was an award-winning hit – and now Eve Leigh’s Midnight Movie plunges us into a sleepless night’s distracted browsing. We never meet the play’s protagonist, instead we follow Avatar 1 (Nadia Nadarajah) and Avatar 2 (Tom Penn) as they tell loosely connected stories, some funny, some mystical, many with a creepy edge. The starting point is a YouTube video of a woman in a hotel elevator appearing to fight an invisible monster; when she reached the top of the building she disappeared, only to be discovered months later, drowned in a water tank the laws of physics suggest she couldn’t have got into on her own. It’s a mystery that’s consumed a lot of people’s time, including the narrator’s, who’s obsessed with finding out what really happened; but investigating it online has pitfalls.

Theatre review: As You Like It (Shakespeare's Globe)

The second show from the Globe’s new Michelle Terry-led ensemble is As You Like It, nominally paired with the Hamlet they’re playing it in rep with as “sibling” plays; to be honest what connections the company have found between the plays aren’t too obviously apparent, but if it doesn’t really come across as a double bill that’s no bad thing because where Hamlet was underwhelming, As You Like It is, well, much more like it. Although the idea of gender-blind casting has been gaining traction in recent years, it’s not often it feels as natural as in these ensemble shows – there tends to be the feel of it mainly being male roles assigned to women to redress the gender imbalance, with the odd recasting the other way so it’s not a box-ticking exercise. Not so in these plays, and particularly this one, where the casting announcement was exciting because it seemed more genuinely gender-blind than anything I’ve seen before: Regardless of gender, the roles assigned seemed like ones I thought would be an interesting match to that particular actor.

Theatre review: Hamlet (Shakespeare's Globe)

After the “teaser” of the touring Twelfth Night and Shrew, it’s time for the main season as Michelle Terry takes over as Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Not only has the venue gone back to having an actor in charge (the first one to hold the post will be returning later in the summer) but the idea of the productions being “actor-led” has been heavily promoted leading up to her first season; in fact the new Globe Ensemble’s first pair of productions were originally announced as being put together without a director, although Federay Holmes and Elle While have since been brought in to fulfil that role. This reliance on actor input is apparent, in both positive and negative ways, in the opening show of the Terry era, and she’s come straight in to take on a challenge, playing the title role in Hamlet*. The Prince of Denmark is in mourning two months after the sudden death of his father, but the royal court around him has already moved on.

Theatre review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Deafinitely Theatre / Globe to Globe)

Deafinitely Theatre first came to Shakespeare's Globe for the original 2012 Globe to Globe season, contributing British Sign Language as one of the many languages the canon was performed in. Love's Labour's Lost was a bit of a wordy choice of comedy to have performed silently, but the company's been invited back this year to produce a new show, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is an infintely sillier play with plenty of opportunities for physical comedy. In addition, there's more here now for people who don't know BSL: The popularity of their first Globe vist led Deafinitely to broaden their scope, from a deaf theatre for deaf audiences, to a deaf theatre for all audiences. So as well as the scene synopses on screens, we now also get a bit of Shakespeare's original text. The cast now includes the odd hearing actor, like Anna-Maria Nabirye, who was a standout in the 2013 Faction season, and here plays a fairy who, along with Alim Jayda's Puck, translates back into English some of the more crucial dialogue.

Theatre review: Tanika's Journey

Deafinitely Theatre were one of the companies contributing to this year's Globe to Globe festival, bringing their British Sign Language storytelling to Love's Labour's Lost. As one of Shakespeare's more verbally dexterous plays I found that silent treatment to have mixed results, but now in a new production at Southwark Playhouse' Vault they present a simpler story, devised by the company. A group of refugees is trudging through a frozen Russian forest. Exhausted, deaf Tamil refugee Tanika (Nadia Nadarajah) collapses in the snow, refusing her guide's (Graeme Brookes) attempts to give her food. As she appears to have given up, she flashes back to her earlier life in Sri Lanka with her family (Mouna Albakry, Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke) and English BSL teacher Edward (Matthew Gurney) who convinces her she needs to try and flee to London; as well as slipping into fantasies of her future life should she finally manage to complete her journey.

Theatre review: Love's Labour's Lost (Deafinitely Theatre / Globe to Globe)

This week is brought to you by the letter L: After Love, Love, Love on Monday it's now the turn of Love's Labour's Lost. This is my final Globe to Globe trip, and the only one that really counts as Shakespeare in a foreign language, as I speak Greek, and the Othello was only translated into a different dialect of English. The language is British Sign Language, and the show's performed by Deafinitely Theatre, who will be following the Globe stint with a brief tour. I chose a BSL show as something I could take my sister to, as she did a course in it last year. What we didn't know when we booked was that her teacher, Nadia Nadarajah, would actually be playing the Princess of France, who along with her ladies-in-waiting arrives in the Court of Navarre. When the King and his friends fall for the ladies, it seriously challenges their recently-made oaths of celibacy.