Culture

Chekhov has always been an important playwright for the English stage—just think of recent landmark productions, from Uncle Vanya with Andrew Scott to The Seagull starring Emilia Clarke. And now, a new addition: Three Sisters is playing at the Sam…

Director and playwright John Retallack staged “Mariupol”, a play by Katya Haddad, at The Cockpit theater with the support of the David Nott Foundation. This is the first staging of the play after a successful reading at Oxford’s The Old…

This Merchant of Venice—with the added subtitle 1936—is pinned to the stage floor, like a model, with push pins, two scenes sharply contradicting the classic content of Shakespeare’s play, yet entirely comprehensible in the context of its new interpretation. The…

Alright, there is one comedy in this selection—but otherwise, prepare yourselves for catharsis. Catharsis is when the audience empathizes deeply with the characters, and this state, as the ancient philosophers believed, purifies and ennobles the viewer—or at least emotionally. Whether…