'Tis Pity She's a Whore (John Ford)

I've never read this Ford play from the late 1620s, so my impression of the production is based solely on the production.  That is, I didn't come to the performance with any notions of what the play was about or what I expected to see.

Cheek By Jowl modernized this production by setting it in the bedroom of a 16-year girl, complete with posters on the wall and clothing strewn about.  This girl, however, will be courted and eventually impregnated and murdered by her fawning older brother.

I found Lydia Wilson's performance as the Annabella who is pulled between her brother Giovanni (Jack Gordon), her maid Putana (Lizzie Hopley), and her (eventual) husband Vasques (Laurence Spellman) engaging and convincing. 

The production, however, tends to be too busy: do I really want to watch actors dance and/or sing for more than 12 seconds? And should I be expected to understand lines delivered while actors are jumping about to loud music? 

Recommend...highly, if only because this play deserves to be seen.

Macbeth, Shakespeare

Transferred to the chaos and bloody rivalry of a pseudo-post-colonial African setting, Stratford's production of Macbeth provided a engaging interpretation of the play.  It made very effective use of total blackouts at significant moments, most particularly during the murder of Banquo, only to have the banquet scene commenced when the lights come back up.  Perhaps it was playgoer's fatigue, but I found the lines a bit too rushed and the action too hectic.  Nevertheless, it provided a fitting ending to a spectacular series.

Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson

Any staging of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair is rare, so it's a treat to see a fine production of the play.  Held together with the thinnest of plots, the play primarily delights in its exploration of the sights and sounds of London street life.  The first scene's Puritan household is quickly abandoned for the fair with its pork roasters, tapsters, pickpockets, whores, cons, dupes, as well as the culminating puppet show. 

This must be a maddening play to produce.  Featuring at least half a dozen subplots, it requires 40 actors on stage. On the page, the text is extremely difficult to read and determine exactly what's going on.  Thus, it's wonderful to have a production that's done so much work for its audience.  The various threads were clearly laid out and easy to follow.  Often multiple encounters scattered across the entire stage vied for the viewer's attention, yet the staging kept the eyes and mind focused on the most significant bits.

The acting was uniformly strong, and the staging effectively conveyed the zany energy of the play. I was particularly impressed by Abigail Winter-Culliford's performance as Mooncalf, Ursla's tapster. Only 12, this young actor maintained an active presence both fore and aft through 75% of the play.    

Recommended.

Winter's Tale, Shakespeare

Produced by Sam Mendes, this production made clear sense of a very convulted play. The review in the Times Literary Supplement (in our mailbox when we returned from the play) faulted the actors for their vowells. Ha! The performances were intelligent and inteligible. Great combination of British and American sensibilities.
We saw three of the actors as we drove off, and M rolled down his window and expressed our admiration of the production.

Highly recommend.

Women Beware Women, Thomas Middleton

We've yet to see a weak production by Red Bull Theater. That's saying alot, especially because they tend to stage underperformed (often for a good reason) plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

This is a highly imaginative production of Middleton's play.

Highly recommended.

King Lear (Shakespeare)

Royal Shakespeare Company.
Directed by Trevor Nunn
Ian McKellan as Lear

The Full Monteverdi

I Fagiolini's unusual performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Il quarto libro de madrigali (Fourth Book of Madrigals).
Wow!
After 35 minutes sitting at cabaret-style tables drinking wine and eating cheese/fruit, a voice to my right began to sing, soon followed by six to eight others who were engaged with another at the table. It was like overhearing a very intimate conversation between a couple. I first thought that the guy to my right was embarrassed to be seated next to a singer, but it was soon clear that he was (as were the other 'partners') part of the performance.
There were no pauses between madrigals, but the music moved straight from one to the next. The ensemble relayed the music from one couple to the next, with each couple in different points entering the lover's quarrel.
The difficult of the music was compounded by the performers' movement and the distance which they were spread. Divided into pairs, they sung/acted the madrigals. Their virtuosity was demonstrated in their ability to overcome problems of tuning and coherence magnified by the space and spacing.
The venue provided good acoustics and fabulous views of midtown Manhattan.
Thus presented dramatic, it is easy to recognize how Monteverdi was the originator of Western opera. It would have been good, however, to have possessed translations in order to understand more fully the arc of the poetic narrative.

High recommend.

Hokaibo (Heisei Nakamura-za)

This performance featured one of only two comic Kabuki and starred Nakamura Kanzaburo XVIII in the lead role. Wonderful and colorful sets and costumes were the backdrop to a drama that depended on physical humor and sexual double-entendres (that weren't always apparent in the English synopsis broadcast through the headsets). The morality of the play was rather dubious, and the rogue character ends up murdered (though he comes back to haunt his somewhat innocent nemesis).
The narrative occupied the first two acts performed before the intermission. After the intermission, the performance accorded more closely with my conceptions of kabuki: traditional Japanese music and dance.
Though predominantly performed in Japanese, the Kanzaburo frequently dropped into English, speaking directly to the audience. This gracious gesture, however, was not necessary for the large number Japanese speakers in the audience, who obviously were able to understand the jokes not apparent via the English synopsis.

The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare)

Propeller production with all-male cast

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)

Propeller production with all-male cast

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

The Wooster Group production using digitally re-edited projection of recording of Richard Burton's live performance of 1964 Broadway production.

The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster)

Hamlet (Shakespeare)