Jon Clark Archives - North West End UK

Game of Thrones: The Mad King – RSC Stratford Upon Avon

8Aug

By Paul WilcoxNo Comments

West Midlands

Game of Thrones: The Mad King – RSC Stratford Upon Avon

There is a particular excitement that accompanies a genuine theatrical event: not simply another adaptation of a familiar property, but the sense that a production is attempting something genuinely ambitious. Three days before its official press night, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s preview of Game of Thrones: The Mad King already feels like one of those rare occasions where expectation meets execution. Running for well over three and a half hours, with just a single twenty-minute interval, this is epic theatre in every sense. Remarkably, it rarely feels overextended. Director Dominic Cooke maintains an unerring grip on the pacing, while adaptor Duncan Macmillan has achieved something that should perhaps have been impossible: distilling George R.R. Martin’s vast mythology into a work t...

The Shark is Broken – Ambassadors Theatre

There are few movies as instantly identifiable by the first few bars of their theme tune. The "Jaws" theme - and the movie - became an iconic hit after the film's release in 1975. The film itself may have been thrilling and horrifying, but the drama that went on behind the scenes was also amazing. Bruce, the titular mechanical star of the film, broke down after salt water corroded his insides. This left the three human stars, Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, with nothing to do until the production team could get the shark back up and chomping on the people of Amity Island. This slice of real life has been turned into this wonderfully original production that wowed audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. It's not hard to see why it was such a hit. A...

Amadeus – National Theatre

Director Michael Longhurst’s 2016 production of Peter Shaffer’s iconic play is a stunning piece of theatre starring Lucian Msamati as Salieri alongside Adam Gillen as Mozart with the musicians of Southbank Sinfonia cleverly weaved into the action providing live accompaniment to the story. We begin at Salieri’s end as he recalls the almost Faustian bargain he made with God at the age of sixteen: to become a fêted and famous composer in exchange for living a virtuous life and honouring God at every turn. Fast forward to 1881 Vienna and all Salieri’s dreams have come true in the court of Emperor Joseph II (Tom Edden). But nobody expected Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A rowdy young prodigy who arrives with his wife to be, Constanze (Karla Crome), determined to leave his mark Whi...