MEASURE FOR MEASURE (The Show Must Go Online)***

By Anon

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diB4ycHdIi8

Available until: Indefinitely

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape

PERICLES (Shakespeare Happy Hours)*****

 

By Megan

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aGXGo3aR08

Available until: Forever, I hope

Pericles is a really difficult play and I’m not sure if I understand it properly yet but I really love it! There are bad things and bad people but then there’s a happy ending and it’s really lovely.

I thought it was quite like a fairy tale. I wasn’t going to write that in case it sounded silly but then one of the actors said that after the show so I don’t feel silly now. Joel Colodner plays Gower who is like a narrator and he tells bits of the story and the way he tells it feels like I’m having a bedtime story and even though bad things happened, every time I saw Gower I felt like everything would be all right in the end.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW (Opera North)****

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odvj84x1NS0

Available until: Unknown

I’ve loved Henry James’ novella since I was a kid (not that that was very long ago) and I will never ever forgive my English teacher for spoiling it all, trying to make everything about sexual repression. Anyone would think these teachers were the teenagers, they’re obsessed! Some people just need to get out less. (My teachers also said Othello isn’t a very good play. Says it all really.)

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (Shakespeare Happy Hours)***

 

By Louise

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfaCDK9Py0I&t=10s

Available until: Indefinitely

This is a really difficult and challenging play – for the actors and production team and for the audience. A lot of the things in the play make it seem like a comedy (two men falling in love with the same girl, girls dressing up as boys, characters getting hold of other characters’ rings) and it is usually included as one of Shakespeare’s comedies. This is probably because, in Shakespeare’s time, a comedy meant a play that had a happy ending, even if it wasn’t funny.

GHOST LIGHT (National Theatre of Scotland/Edinburgh International Festival)****

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXajvQfXsu4&t=1s

Available until: Unknown

Ghost Light is described as a love letter from the National Theatre of Scotland, offering tantalising glimpses of their past work, along with hints of what we have to look forward to in the future.

At first, I wasn’t sure where ‘love letter’ came into it. It isn’t set up as a love letter. It’s a series of scenes. But then it seemed to click for me. Although not a traditional letter, this piece is undeniably full of love. Love for the theatre itself, love for the plays that have been and will be produced there, love for the audiences that have shared so many moments with them.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG (Glyndebourne)****

 

By Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noJI-A9BHKc

Available until: Sunday 6 September, 5pm

They’ve done it to me again! I always get landed with the performance the kids don’t want to review. Still, I can understand if they’re daunted by Wagner. Wagner is… a commitment. Der fliegende Hollander isn’t so bad as it’s fairly short but even with Das Rheingold, you know there are three parts more to go and you’re not even a quarter of the way through because they get longer and longer! I did once listen to the entire Ring Cycle in a day (when I was in my 20s, I never could resist a dare) and I actually ended up liking it more as it went on but would I ever do that again? No. One at a time? Definitely.

OUR TOWN (Voice Theatre)****

 

By Louise

Link for Act 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEnMLY7-0LA&t=4s

Link for Acts 2&3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykKB6E6H-B8

Available until: Indefinitely

One problem with producing plays on Zoom is that it’s there’s no stage. Some theatre companies like The Show Must Go Online and Shakespeare’s Happy Hours have got around this problem really well, but there are probably some plays where having a shared space really matters.