Musings on The Tempest and Council
It was a dark and stormy night… Shakespeare’s last solo-authored play, The Tempest, opens with a storm (the eponymous tempest) in which a group of elite passengers (a king, a…
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Musings on Shakespearean Apocrypha
When the First Folio was published in 1623, it had 36 of the Bard’s plays, listed in three categories: histories, tragedies, and comedies (it didn’t include his longer poems, or…
Musings on Shakespeare’s Anachronisms
When the clock struck three in Julius Caesar, you probably scratched your head, knowing that striking clocks didn’t exist two millennia ago in the play’s setting. In Caesar’s time, people…
The gems of Salomé
I was perhaps 11 or 12 when I first encountered Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. Some of it, at least. At the time, I knew nothing of Wilde, his writing, or…
Giving the Devil the benefit of the law
A Man for All Seasons (1960) —————————————————————————————————- Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law…
Vancouver Fringe brims with political plays
The Troubles (Resounding Scream Theatre) The Vancouver International Fringe Festival is underway in Canada’s westernmost metropolis, with 97 shows on offer during a program that lasts over two weeks. This…