Robert Tanitch, Author at Catholic Herald

Robert Tanitch

Theatre: GIs and Tips the cat in a Cornish war scandal

September 01, 2016

Emma Rice, artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, made her name as director and then artistic director of Kneehigh, Cornwall’s International Theatre, the creator of productions in quarries, woods, industrial ruins and on cliff tops. Rice now revives Kneehigh’s most recent production, which was originally staged in a purpose-built tent. 946: The Amazing Story of

Theatre: The search for integrity in a rat-race society

August 25, 2016

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Allegro premiered in 1947 and got a mixed press. Broadway audiences, who had just seen Oklahoma! and Carousel, were very disappointed. Today there are going to be a lot of musical buffs and Rodgers and Hammerstein aficionados who will want to see its European premiere at Southwark Playhouse, flaws

Theatre: An extraordinary study of barrenness

August 18, 2016

The Young Vic is well known for its radical approach to the classics. Australian director Simon Stone’s truly remarkable reworking of Yerma is so radical that nothing is left but the title and the terrible agonies of not being able to have a child. Since yerma is Spanish for barren, Stone could have called his

Theatre: Why I feel sorry for Harry Potter’s son

August 11, 2016

In the Victorian era, the heyday for popular theatre, audiences loved melodrama, spectacle and sensational scenes. “Sensation is what the public wants and you can’t give them too much of it,” said the highly successful actor, playwright and theatre manager Dion Boucicault. Plus ça change. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is not an adaptation

Theatre: Judas upstages Jesus in Superstar revival

August 04, 2016

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera for secular audiences, concentrating on Jesus’s humanity rather than His divinity. The book covers the final days of his life as seen from the point of view of Judas Iscariot. There is no Christian message and there is no Resurrection. At its

Theatre: Radical Swan Lake with a royal twist

July 28, 2016

Swan Lake is every choreographer’s plaything and Tchaikovsky’s score is always a winner. Graeme Murphy’s radical version for Australian Ballet at the London Coliseum is half-modern and half-traditional, pandering both to those who want something new and to those who want something old. It never quite gels. But despite its flaws, and the juggling with

Theatre: Theatreland struggles to top real-life drama

July 21, 2016

At the Royal Court, during a six-week rehearsal period, playwright Anthony Neilson and his actors created and developed Unreachable from scratch. There was no script. They ended up with a scrappy satire on the movie industry which is much inferior to Charles Wood’s Veterans, a spoof on the making of Tony Richardson’s The Charge of

Theatre: Gangster kids splurge their way to glory

July 14, 2016

Bugsy Malone, the film, made British director and screenwriter Alan Parker’s name in 1975. The musical, with songs by Paul Williams, is a parody of a Warner Bros gangster movie of the Prohibition 1930s, with stars such as Edward G Robinson, James Cagney, Paul Muni and Humphrey Bogart. Parker’s originality was to cast children in

Theatre: A Henry V you just can’t believe in

July 07, 2016

Shakespeare’s Henry V can be performed as either patriotic jingoism or anti-war propaganda. The latter interpretation is much more popular these days. Henry, the man, can be acted as either hero or war criminal. It all depends which bits of the text are cut. But what happens when Henry is played by a woman? The

Theatre: A Richard III who takes his tyranny seriously

June 30, 2016

Shakespeare’s Richard III has always been popular with actors and audiences. Richard Burbage and David Garrick scored a huge success. So did Edmund Kean. The role was a major turning point in Laurence Olivier’s career. The best Richards of our times have been Ian McKellen on film and the Russian actor Ramaz Chkhikvadze on stage.

Theatre: Shoe-shop girl shines in Lancashire classic

June 23, 2016

Hobson’s Choice by the Lancashire playwright Harold Brighouse is far and away the most enduring and loved of all the plays of the Manchester school of sentimental realism. Initially it was turned down by London theatre managers who had a prejudice against regional writers, and it didn’t arrive in the West End until a successful

Theatre: Irish ‘Shrew’ is too brutal to be funny

June 16, 2016

When I heard that Shakespeare’s Globe was going to stage The Taming of the Shrew with Irish actors, it seemed a really good idea. The Irish are very adept at mixing tragedy and farce. Caroline Byrne has set her production in 1916; but since there is no mention of the Easter Uprising, either verbally or

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