Theatre highlights of the week: Privacy, Shakespeare's birthday and a Chekhov double bill
Tuesday 22 April
Privacy opens at the Donmar Warehouse
© Manuel Harlan
Is there really such a thing as privacy anymore? Playwright James Graham (This House. National Theatre) returns with this dramatic investigation of the digital age.
Provoked by the recent revelations of Edward Snowden, Privacy explores how governments and corporations collect and use our personal information, and what that means for our security, our identity and our future.
Wednesday 23 April
Hamlet Globe to Globe opens at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
On this day – the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth – Shakespeare’s Globe embarks on a two-year global tour of Hamlet that will take in every country in the world.
The Globe to Globe Hamlet, directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole, will travel to all nations in the world to stage the play in a huge range of unique and atmospheric venues, from town squares to national theatres. They will travel by boat, train, car and aeroplane, planning their routes across the seven continents to minimise the tour’s carbon footprint as much as possible
The Silver Tassie opens at the Lyttelton (National Theatre)
Sean O’Casey‘s rarely performed anti-war play of 1928 takes place in Ireland during World War One. Harry Heegan leads his football team to victory, arriving home in swaggering celebration before he grabs his kit and heads for the trenches.
A nightmare world awaits. The men, reduced to cannon-fodder, speak in mangled incantations as the casualties stack up. Months later, Harry returns, a cripple at the football club party.
Thursday 24 April
Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya open at Wyndham's Theatre
Russian director, producer and screenwriter Andrei Konchalovsky transfers his productions of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters from Moscow’s Mossovet State Academic Theatre.
Performed in their original Russian with English surtitles, Konchalovsky has utilized the same setting and cast for both productions, drawing on the striking similarities between Chekhov’s two most celebrated plays.
