Five great open air theatre shows to watch while London swelters this summer
London is hot right now. Literally. And it's only going to get hotter. Next week, it'll probably cool down a bit at the start and then get hot again. It's basically unbearable, but at the same time it's outdoor frickin' theatre season, baby.
Where better to cool down than at an open air theatre with a gentle night breeze and glass of something cold, preferably watching something classy but not aggressively difficult. Here are five outdoor shows on right now or about to start that will take you outside the scorching concrete hellscape that is our beloved city.
1. The free outdoor musicals festival
Is it possible to simply show tune your way through 30-plus degree heat? They'll be giving it their best try at West End Live this weekend, the two day festival at which the cast of pretty much every musical in town will be singing a song or two, for free, in Trafalgar Square. The catch? The best shows are early on the Saturday, and it'll hit capacity rapidly. Plus it'll be 'el scorchio'. For a complete guide including full line up, head here.
Trafalgar Square, Sat Jul 21 and Sun Jul 22.
2. Shakespeare's daftest play
The Globe has fine productions of Romeo and Juliet and Arthur Miller's The Crucible currently in its rep. But if tragic deaths and people named Goody are a bit much for your heat fogged brain, get down to its new production of Shakespeare's dumbest play. The Merry Wives of Windsor is a joyously silly romp in which his beloved character Falstaff – who dies offstage in Henry V, which is set in 1415 – is somehow not only alive but getting up to mischief with the womenfolk of Elizabethan England. It's a hoot!
Shakespeare's Globe, Jul 4-Sep 20. Buy tickets here.
3. A YA thriller
There'll be nothing trashy about the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre's stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman's immortal dystopian race drama Noughts & Crosses. However, it's not going to be arty, impenetrable theatre: it's a thriller, a properly accessible, teen-orientated story that should get the pulse pounding enough to let you forget the heat.
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Jun 28-Jul 26. Buy tickets here.
4. Shakespeare's darkest play (but fun!)
Okay that was a bit of a shout back to number two: The Taming of the Shrew probably isn't really Shakespeare's darkest play, but taken at face value its account of how boisterous Petruchio breaks the spirit of the feisty Katherina is pretty damn problematic. But you can massage it to make it a lot less grim, and I gather that's the deal with this pop song-saturated production from the redoubtable Shakespeare in the Squares. They're midway through their annual tour of London's outdoor spaces – check out the schedule to see if they're coming near to you soon.
Various venues, now until Jul 12.
5. Stand in the street and watch Rachel Zegler sing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina'
Jamie Lloyd's Evita revival has made worldwide headlines this week for its typically ballsy showstopper moment, wherein US star Zegler sings the anthemic 'Don't Cry to Me Argentina' from a balcony on Argyll Street. Nobody is suggesting that this constitutes an entire theatre show, but it's a uniquely London theatrical moment that will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes, and you do get a pretty banging song sung by a celebrity for five minutes or so at a time of day (around 9pm) when the temperature is finally something approaching 'pleasant'.
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Time Out
10 hours ago
- Time Out
Five great open air theatre shows to watch while London swelters this summer
London is hot right now. Literally. And it's only going to get hotter. Next week, it'll probably cool down a bit at the start and then get hot again. It's basically unbearable, but at the same time it's outdoor frickin' theatre season, baby. Where better to cool down than at an open air theatre with a gentle night breeze and glass of something cold, preferably watching something classy but not aggressively difficult. Here are five outdoor shows on right now or about to start that will take you outside the scorching concrete hellscape that is our beloved city. 1. The free outdoor musicals festival Is it possible to simply show tune your way through 30-plus degree heat? They'll be giving it their best try at West End Live this weekend, the two day festival at which the cast of pretty much every musical in town will be singing a song or two, for free, in Trafalgar Square. The catch? The best shows are early on the Saturday, and it'll hit capacity rapidly. Plus it'll be 'el scorchio'. For a complete guide including full line up, head here. Trafalgar Square, Sat Jul 21 and Sun Jul 22. 2. Shakespeare's daftest play The Globe has fine productions of Romeo and Juliet and Arthur Miller's The Crucible currently in its rep. But if tragic deaths and people named Goody are a bit much for your heat fogged brain, get down to its new production of Shakespeare's dumbest play. The Merry Wives of Windsor is a joyously silly romp in which his beloved character Falstaff – who dies offstage in Henry V, which is set in 1415 – is somehow not only alive but getting up to mischief with the womenfolk of Elizabethan England. It's a hoot! Shakespeare's Globe, Jul 4-Sep 20. Buy tickets here. 3. A YA thriller There'll be nothing trashy about the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre's stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman's immortal dystopian race drama Noughts & Crosses. However, it's not going to be arty, impenetrable theatre: it's a thriller, a properly accessible, teen-orientated story that should get the pulse pounding enough to let you forget the heat. Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Jun 28-Jul 26. Buy tickets here. 4. Shakespeare's darkest play (but fun!) Okay that was a bit of a shout back to number two: The Taming of the Shrew probably isn't really Shakespeare's darkest play, but taken at face value its account of how boisterous Petruchio breaks the spirit of the feisty Katherina is pretty damn problematic. But you can massage it to make it a lot less grim, and I gather that's the deal with this pop song-saturated production from the redoubtable Shakespeare in the Squares. They're midway through their annual tour of London's outdoor spaces – check out the schedule to see if they're coming near to you soon. Various venues, now until Jul 12. 5. Stand in the street and watch Rachel Zegler sing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' Jamie Lloyd's Evita revival has made worldwide headlines this week for its typically ballsy showstopper moment, wherein US star Zegler sings the anthemic 'Don't Cry to Me Argentina' from a balcony on Argyll Street. Nobody is suggesting that this constitutes an entire theatre show, but it's a uniquely London theatrical moment that will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes, and you do get a pretty banging song sung by a celebrity for five minutes or so at a time of day (around 9pm) when the temperature is finally something approaching 'pleasant'.
Scotsman
10 hours ago
- Scotsman
Gordon Barr on the Bard in the Botanics festival in Glasgow: 'we're very vulnerable to the weather'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... When Gordon Barr stepped up earlier this month to accept the Best Production of the Year Award at this year's Critic's Awards for Theatre in Scotland, few people in the world of Scottish theatre were surprised. As artistic director of Bard In The Botanics - the company that presents a powerful season of Shakespeare and other classics in Glasgow's Botanic Gardens every summer - Barr may be running a shoestring operation, compared with many of his colleagues. Yet the combination of brilliant classic texts, two magical midsummer settings outdoors in the gardens and in the Kibble Palace, and the gradual development, over more than 20 years, of an acting company whose skills have been honed by contact with some of the greatest dramatic poetry ever written, never fails to produce some breathtaking moments. And Barr's short but overwhelmingly intense 2024 version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, staged in the Kibble Palace and starring Nicole Cooper, overtook some spectacular competition to win the CATS premier award for the 2024-25 season. Gordon Barr | Contributed 'We don't really receive any direct public funding,' says Barr, in a break from rehearsals, 'although we depend on massive in-kind support from Glasgow City Council, who give us a very generous deal for the use of the Botanics, and for some storage space there. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'But apart from that - well there are some donations and so on, but 80 per cent of our income is from the box office, and that of course makes us very vulnerable to he vagaries of the Glasgow weather. Last year wasn't a great summer, and that meant we had to think in terms of a good, popular programme for this year, to try and boost our ticket income again.' The result is a four-show programme that features outdoor productions - directed by Barr himself - of two of the most popular Shakespeare plays in the canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo And Juliet; alongside Kibble Palace versions, by Barr's associate director Jennifer Dick, of Christopher Marlowe's Faustus, and her own play Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal In Bohemia, adapted from three of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous Holmes stories. 'All of these plays involve titles that audiences will recognise,' says Barr, 'and that they'll enjoy seeing in new versions. For me, though,' adds Barr, who is famous for his radical gender-shifting approach to Shakespeare's texts, 'this season marks a really interesting return to the first two plays I ever directed in the Botanics, when I arrived in 2004. For Romeo And Juliet, in the second half of the season, I'm looking at quite a modern dress approach. Sam Stopford is playing Romeo, with Lola Aluko as Juliet, and I'm hoping to foreground the young people in the story, and explore how they feel they have been failed by the older generation, and left to live with the broken society they have created. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Rehearsals for A Midsummer Night's Dream at Bard in the Botnics | Contributed 'And for A Midsummer Night's Dream - well I think I'm taking a relatively conventional approach this year. At any rate, all four of the lovers will be as written by Shakespeare, in terms of gender; and I'm focusing very much on the play's relationship with nature. Titania's fairies will be real magical creatures, spirits of the natural world. 'One thing I have changed, though,' says Barr, 'is the relationship between Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen. What happens in the original - with Oberon doing Titania wrong, and then using his magic to trick and mock her into accepting it - just seemed too patriarchal, to me. 'So in this version, it will be Oberon who is put under a spell, and who falls in love with an ass. With Allan Steele playing Bottom, that should be fun. And that will be out on our glorious garden stage, of course; where there's no avoiding the sheer power of the natural world, for better or worse, and whether it smiles on us or not."
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Inflexible autocrat, unchecked power – Coriolanus is ‘never not timely'. So why is this Shakespeare play so rarely staged?
When Bell Shakespeare artistic director Peter Evans was handed the keys to the company's new home at Pier 2/3 in Sydney's Walsh Bay, he knew precisely with which play he wanted to christen the space. With its generously proportioned stage, and unusually intimate 250-seat audience accommodation, Coriolanus – one of Shakespeare's most political, and least-performed, tragedies – was his top pick. It didn't happen. The national theatre company instead opted for Shakespeare's crowd pleasers – Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth – to introduce audiences to its new harbourside performance space, the Neilson Nutshell. But three years on, Evans has finally got his way as Bell Shakespeare tackles Coriolanus for the first time in almost three decades. In the new production, Shakespeare's bruising exploration of politics, power and civic identity plays out in front of an audience split into two sides; where you sit will determine whose side the cast assumes you are on, patrician or plebeian. Palestinian Australian actor and Logie winner Hazem Shammas plays Coriolanus, a decorated general whose rigid elitism and disdain for the common people make him both hero and heretic. Shammas played Macbeth for Bell Shakespeare two years ago and Evans finds the juxtaposition of the two roles compelling: while Macbeth charts the psychological collapse of an ambitious man, Coriolanus is all rigidity and resolve – a man with no time for soliloquies or self-doubt. His inflexible convictions on the right of Rome's elite to continue wielding unchecked power fly in the face of the fledgling republic's ambitions for democracy, an experiment dependant on compromise. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Coriolanus cannot bend so he breaks, and in spectacular fashion; banished from Rome, the general switches sides and joins the enemy, his love for his city turned to vengeance in a binary act of political spite. The political thriller transforms into a revenge drama. 'Coriolanus is absolutely a character of conviction, and he has very clear and elitist views of the way Rome should work,' says Evans. 'And what makes him remarkable is how, to his own detriment, he steadfastly sticks to those convictions. 'I'm interested in how complicated that makes the audience feel when they're watching it – you disagree with him, but you can also see the appeal of his certainty.' With its precarious dance between autocracy and democracy, Evans resisted mapping the play, set in the fledgling democracy of the Roman Republic circa 490BCE, too neatly onto 'modern headlines'. And Coriolanus is, after all, the antithesis of a populist leader. Evans has staged the play in another distinctive time and place: post–cold war eastern Europe in the early 1990s, as it picks itself up from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. 'There was this hope that [eastern Europe] would become this great liberal democracy,' he says. 'And then, of course, through the '90s we get the rise of the oligarchs, and end up in what is another autocracy and a very specific kind of a leader, led by an elite.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Coriolanus remains one of Shakespeare's least performed plays; this is only the second time Bell Shakespeare has staged it since the company was established in 1990. 'Even though it has the most amazing domestic scenes – and Coriolanus's mother and wife are extraordinary characters – it's certainly more overtly political than many of the others,' Evans says. 'It shows us that while complete conviction can be compelling in a politician, if they are inflexible, then it will eventually lead to an autocratic rule.' Coriolanus may not have the marquee appeal of a Macbeth or Hamlet, but Evans contends that its relevance is perennially urgent. 'A play like this is never not timely. In the last five to 10 years, western democracy has come under question … and certainly, when I was growing up, that would have been unthinkable.' Coriolanus plays in Sydney's Neilson Nutshell until 20 July, then the Arts Centre Melbourne from 24 July to 10 August
