The work of an acclaimed critic and director, this book breaks new ground by describing how the rehearsal process highlights the principal theatrical issues of Shakespeare's late plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Drawing on his extensive experience with the rehearsal and performance at Stratford, Ontario in 1986, and at the National Theatre in 1988, Warren demonstrates how rehearsal creates extreme contrasts of mood and action, places intense personal crises in a wider political framework, and inspires spiritual journeys in the actors. Addressing many aspects of production--acting, direction, design, lighting, music, and audience response--this work will be important to all those involved with Shakespearean drama and its performance.
Industry Reviews
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Shakespeare the Theatre Poet by R. Hapgood (19 ).
'fine book ... adroit and engaging, never swamped by the materials, always clear in the connection of rehearsal to performance, diagnosing the problems of staging posed by these plays'
Times Literary Supplement
'synthesizes performance analysis and textual scholarship in an exemplary manner'
British Book News, April 1991
`Abundant aural and visual details heighten the interest of and enhance the value of Staging Shakespeare's Late Plays. Warren is alert to the significance of intonation, pauses, silence, gesture, casting, stage picture, parallel staging, costume, set, music, sound effects, textual decisions, etc ... a valuable contribution to performance criticism and to the study of Shakespeare's late plays.'
Theatre Notebook
'few studies have conveyed so well the excitement of finding solutions to the texts' problems when they are formulated in such a way ... The book impresses both as an exercise in performance-oriented criticism and as a record of critically aware theatre practice ... it offers valuable insights into the ways in which the texts can work in rehearsal and performance.'
ussell Jackson, University of Birmingham, Theatre Research International, Vol. 17, Spring '92
`In these grim times of reduced library and personal budgets the first reason for recommending this book is its good value: ... As a detailed account of the plays from the actors', directors', and designers' points of view, this work has much to offer, ...'
Marion Lomax, Modern Language Review
'Roger Warren's account of recent major engagements with the late plays offers discrimination of a high order as well as a rich theatrical record ... excellent book. In its sensitive, intricate accounts of these contemporary theatrical journeys, it purports to tell us something about our era's particular fascination with these plays. The Oxford book is handsomely produced and illustrated with eighteen production photographs and eleven sketches by designer
Alison Chitty, some of which capture the theater's explorations of these plays that so absorb us.'
Gary Jay Williams, Shakespeare Quarterly, Summer '93
'rich examples from other productions illuminate further possibilities: the plays open out on the page rather than close in, achieving what the best performance criticism aims at ... The chapter on Pericles, too, is a model of its kind, not only exploring the theatrical implications of textual scholarship but also demonstrating its genuine creative potential.'
Christine Dymkowski, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, Review of English Studies, Vol. 44, May 1993
