The performances in Bard on the Beach's Henry V are excellent. The script, on the other hand is tired, dated, and old. Is it arrogant to critique a master like William Shakespeare? Perhaps. But the fact is that in a canon of nearly fourty plays only a handful are worth doing. The rest could really benefit from innovative make overs and reinterpretations. And unfortunately there isn't enough innovation in this production to save it.
The play begins with Henry primed to engage in a war to take over France. In a humorous passage, a clergyman justifies...
While I love Shakespeare, I’m not always comfortable with the unquestioning adulation that he’s accorded in our culture. I don’t for a minute buy the argument that somehow he created modern consciousness (as Harold Bloom contends). Nor do I believe that every word he wrote is somehow sacred. So many people (mostly academics) spend so much time trying to get to the definitive Shakespeare text, yet it’s an impossible task and virtually a fool’s errand. In part because of the forms of transmission we have for his texts are so unreliable (whether it was people frantically copying them down during...
What do you mean they don't have chemistry, Andrew? John Murphy and Jennifer Lines back into love at Bard.
Vancouver: The UBC opera ensemble (students or recent graduates of the UBC opera program) sing Mozart’s Cosí Fan Tutte - a presentation of Bard on the Beach'sOpera and Arias program - with irreverent glee. These folks know their business, and Bard’s mainstage theatre is the perfect place to see Mozart’s upbeat opera, since compared to many opera venues it is intimate, as eighteenth century theatres generally were, and the audience can connect more easily with the performers.
UBC Opera Ensemble and members of Vancouver Opera Orchestra perform "Così fan tutte" for Bard on the Beach's 2009 Opera & Arias. Photo: David Blue
