Live Theatre / Musicals

[rob@rar]

Saw "Hamlet Hail to the Thief" last night at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. It's a mashup of Shakespeare's play and Radiohead's Hail to the Thief album from 2003. It was utterly glorious.

The play was edited down to a single act of about 1hr40m, but covered the key parts of the story, all the principal characters and all the speeches you expect to hear. But all this was infused with Radiohead's music at stadium-concert volume, including a couple of songs sung by Hamlet and Ophelia, with lots of choreography which both illustrated the characters and brought huge energy to the stage. Set design, projection-mapping and sound design were all stunning:



This was a brilliant take on one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, at the RSC itself just a short walk from Shakespeare's birthplace. It's on for another week in Stratford and I do hope it gets performed elsewhere; if it heads to the US I'd urge you to see it. It's astonishingly good theatre. But if you can see it in Stratford (I think there are some tickets still available), it's a wonderful experience to spend some time exploring Shakespeare's life by visiting his birthplace then seeing one of his plays brought bang up to date despite being written more than 400 years ago. This is what BroadwayWorld.com made of it.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

I guess? I do think this season of musicals were weak (other than Death Becomes Her and Maybe Happy Ending).

Dead Outlaw is fantastic.

 

[oliverblackwood]

Dead Outlaw is fantastic.

I fully support it. A masterpiece!

 

[Cup_Of_Coffee]

Not to get too far ahead and remove Tony talks, but for a fall (early Oct) trip, do we have recommendations for what I should see? Looking to see 3-4 shows. I’m not aware of new falls shows and am wondering what shows from this seasons are a must for Broadway. My boyfriend and I are close enough to Boston and Providence to see any show that will tour if we want to.