Henry VI: Rebellion

Following a successful open dress rehearsal project developing Henry VI, part one, the Royal Shakespeare Company is now mounting full productions of Henry VI, part two and Henry VI, part three in its Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Rather than sticking to the traditional numerical names, this second part of Shakespeare’s first Henriad has been renamed Henry VI: […]

#MindTheBard 2021: round-up

You know what? I think this hybrid form of challenge week might be here to stay. Despite the fact that it’s taken me almost a week to write this round-up post, it’s actually felt pretty manageable – and I don’t know whether I’ll have the energy to go out to the theatre every single night […]

#MindTheBard: Leprosy (Henry VI, part 2)

Ah, leprosy. A disease (along with gout, syphilis & rabies) that for some reason makes me snigger, despite how terrible it would actually be to have it. It’s mentioned in a few of Shakespeare’s plays, but as the Henry VI Henriad is such a rarity, I thought this was the one to go for. This part […]

#MindTheBard 2021: Diary

As I’m not doing much in the way of reviews for this #MindTheBard, I thought the best way to keep things going throughout the week was to do a daily ‘diary’ update – this way I can give you a little bit of feedback on whatever version of the day’s play I end up seeing. […]

Challenge Week 2021: Mind The Bard

We’ve had Mind The Bard, we’ve had Mind The Bard: 2 Bard 2 Spurious – and now I give you… Mind The Bard 3: Hospital Shift. (There is no earthly reason why I’m taking inspiration from the Fast & Furious franchise titles, but there we go.) It’s a bit of a risk taking the decision to […]

Most popular posts of 2020

Against all odds, Mind the Blog managed to gather very nearly the same amount of hits in 2020 as it did in 2019 – considering the fact that theatres were only open for about a quarter of the year, and that I became too knackered to put many new posts out from the autumn onwards, […]

The Show Must Go Online: “It’s a real community that uplifts and supports each other”

I may be woefully behind on my show write-ups (thanks, day job!), but I couldn’t not mark The Show Must Go Online coming to an end – at least until further notice. It’s also Love Theatre Day today, so it would have been remiss of me not to do something in honour of that; just […]

#MindTheBard 2020: Shakespeare & Somerset

As previous Shakespeare-related challenge weeks have been based almost solely in London, I’ve enjoyed taking the Bard out to Somerset for the majority of this #MindTheBard week. Disappointingly there don’t seem to be any records of Shakespeare’s players visiting the region during his lifetime, however I am one for tenuous connections (hence ‘2 Bard 2 […]

Never Mind The Blog… Here’s Shakespeare Day 2020

We can’t be 100% certain, but it is widely accepted that William Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 – and died on the same date in 1616. Though the theatres are closed, that doesn’t mean we can’t mark Shakespeare Day in alternative ways… News The RSC has closed the Swan Theatre until the autumn, […]

The Show Must Go Online: Henry VI, part two

Exit Joan of Arc and enter Jack Cade, as The Show Must Go Online barrels from Henry VI, part one straight into Henry VI, part two. Commonly viewed as the best instalment of this particular trilogy, and with the largest collection of characters in all of Shakespeare’s plays, the production was billed with this description: “Illicit affairs. […]