15 November 2024
There can be few better ways to see your English A Level set text brought to life than by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, as Upper Sixth students discovered on Thursday 7 November.
Dr Markus Klinge, Second in English Department
Our day in Stratford began with a visit to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, where we saw the rooms in which he was born and lived as a boy and young man. Anjali expressed how moving it was to see all the old, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century graffiti from previous generations of Shakespeare enthusiasts carefully preserved in the Birthplace.
Later, we saw a superb production of Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. John Douglas Thomas as Othello, Will Keen as Iago and Juliet Rylance as Desdemona were all in good form: lavish period costumes clashed with a scaled-back, minimalist set, placing Shakespeare’s tragedy specifically in Renaissance Venice and Cyprus, whilst also underlining the play’s universal, timeless qualities. Eden especially liked the innovative “use of light, sound and space”, which made this an effective staging and Poppy felt that “the acting was captivating”.
We were also lucky enough to have a special, exclusive backstage tour of the theatre, arranged and conducted by Al Barclay, who played Lodovico in the production. Alice was particularly excited about squeezing past Desdemona and Emilia (Juliet Rylance and Anastasia Hille) as they were going out of the stage door, as well as getting so close to all the props used in the play: “We saw the handkerchief!” The icing on the cake for everyone was to set foot on the hallowed stage of Royal Shakespeare Theatre (main photo).