stage

Wendy and Peter Pan and the RSC

Hands up who knew (or at least now remembers that they once knew) that the original play (and subsequent novelisation) by J.M. Barrie was titled “Peter Pan And Wendy” rather than just the “Peter Pan” that current publications and productions favour?

Friday Hoyden: Yvonne Brewster

Director Yvonne Brewster founded Britain’s most prominent Black theatre company, Talawa, in 1986, in order to produce work that showcased actors from a diversity of racial backgrounds, who were not getting the work they should have been in the large, subsidised theatres.

Friday Hoyden: Dora Chance

Dora and Nora Chance (the “Lucky Chances”, naturally) are twins born into post- war London, on the wrong side of the theatrical tracks. Bastard children of a grand Shakespearean actor, Dora and Nora learn to dance to work their passage through a world that makes a great fuss of legitimacy, but likes to have less licit elements on call as well. Dora narrates, and you accompany her giddy passions, frantic hopes and pragmatic compromises.

Blegging: Name Orlando’s Book

My first book is to be published later this year, and I am still not happy with the title. It is an academic text, but one I hope will have a broader appeal for people interested in the theatre, and the way women are presented on stage.

Friday Hoyden: Emilia

In Othello, it is Emilia, unfortunate wife of the villainous Iago, who delivers the woman’s equivalent of Shylock’s more famous “Has not a Jew eyes?” speech.

Such is the focus on the central couple that it is easy to forget that two husbands kill their wives in this play.