In order to create an archive of the Shakespeare 400 activities that took place across all the partner organisations in 2016, a team of students at King's College London, from various disciplines and levels of study, reviewed as many of the events as possible.
Below are all of the reviews. Use the search box to find reviews
of a particular event.
Review by Romola Nuttall, PhD student, Early Modern English Literature. In this well-attended talk, Michael Wood takes his audience back to the rural Warwickshire of Shakespeare’s grandparents and parents. Read more...
Review by Jenna Byers, PhD candidate in History. The season will explore the inspirational influence of our greatest playwright on filmmakers across the world, featuring films from the silent era, award-winning adaptations and contemporary interpretations of the Bard’s work. Read more...
Review by Eleanor Fox, BMus, Music, AKC. This was the first of a series of talks organized by The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), which aims to demonstrate the historical significance of Shoreditch in the early modern period. Read more...
Review by Yianna Theodorou, English and Film BA. The evening’s screening of Forbidden Planet was introduced by members of the Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences with a keen interest to prove their department held an interest in the arts, and did not simply run on numbers and tests. Set in a distant future, yet based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest... Read more...
Review by Stefanie Jirsak, PhD candidate in Management Research A festival that is typically overwhelming and exhausting, and where one struggles to get an immersive experience with the event and the theme? No, not the case with Play On. The event defied any stereotype of festivals being crammed with a lot of breadth, but little depth. Read more...
Review by Shehrazade Zafar-Arif, MA Shakespeare Studies. A cold, rainy Saturday evening was no time to be outside, and yet Guildhall Yard was filled to the brim with people, huddling together for warmth as they looked up expectantly at the beautiful old building. Read more...
Review by Jiabao Sun, PhD candidate in Chinese Studies Can a Shakespeare play acted by one person? Cathy Naden did it in her version of Antony and Cleopatra in Forced Entertainment’s Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, which played in the Pit at the Barbican. Read more...
Review by Daniela Tejada-Venegas, MA Arts & Cultural Management. Bringing light to the Guildhall Yard, which lies upon the city’s Roman amphitheatre and holds Shakespeare’s deed and one of the world’s finest exemplars of the First Folio, Shakespeare Son et Lumiere reimagined this little historical urban gem Read more...
Review by Andreea Scridon, BA Classics and Comparative Literature. Anyone unfamiliar with Tabletop Shakespeare will be instantly struck by its unconventionality, and will continue to expect a twist back to the traditional. Read more...
Review by Danny Shanahan, BA Comparative Literature. What one found when entering the Barbican’s basement theatre space to see Hamlet was not Benedict Cumberbatch. Nor did one find an elaborate set, with mechanical moving parts, wind and fog machines, or even a single solitary strobe light. Read more...