The Tempest and Measure for Measure
Renaissance Now Theatre & Film offers a pair of Shakespeare plays in "now speak" adaptations that mix the original text with additions in modern language: a classical-style version of the fantastcal shipwreck tale The Tempest , adapted and directed by troupe leader director Kathy Curtiss; and a contemporary reimagining of the proto-#MeToo problem play Measure for Measure , directed by Sonja Hugo and adapted by Steven Rimke. The productions rotate in rep in matinee and evening performances throughout the three-day run.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘I would go-go dance in a shower then work on sonnets!' Ncuti Gatwa's sexy new Shakespearean drama
'I think of it as a very sexy, dangerous game of Elizabethan cat and mouse.' Ncuti Gatwa is describing his new project with the Royal Shakespeare Company, a two-hander about William Shakespeare and fellow playwright Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe. In Born With Teeth, Will and Kit collaborate on a play about Henry VI – for 'collaborate', read flirt, fight and ruminate betrayal. Gatwa plays Marlowe and Shakespeare is Edward Bluemel; the pair last worked together on TV's Sex Education. Bluemel followed that series about horny teens with playing a vampire (A Discovery of Witches), an MI6 agent (Killing Eve) and a brooding lord (My Lady Jane), while Gatwa was cast as one of the Kens in the Barbie movie and starred in a little thing called Doctor Who. Sitting on a sofa just before rehearsals begin, they make amiable, nicely contrasted figures. Gatwa with cropped hair and tight white T-shirt, his bangle and ring shining gold. Tousle-haired Bluemel in black, silver rings in ear and on finger. He's eager and chatty; Gatwa seems more guarded, until his laugh explodes seemingly out of nowhere. A note from playwright Liz Duffy Adams in the Born With Teeth script says that the actors' ages or looks don't matter, 'as long as they are wildly charismatic'. I have to ask: do they feel well cast? They guffaw, and Bluemel leans forward. 'I'm here to break it to everyone that you, Ncuti, are wildly charismatic.' So who are these characters? 'It's fascinating to dig into these men who were more than likely queer in different ways,' says Bluemel. 'Marlowe wears his heart on his sleeve – plays like Edward II are brazen and brave depictions of queer love. Shakespeare is scared – he wants to talk about things, but via ancient Rome or picturesque Ephesus.' In the play, Will avers, 'I want to hide in my work, like an outlaw in the forest.' Kit derides his colleague as 'careful Will, who won't'. Marlowe, Gatwa declares, 'dances with danger'. The play leans into his supposed career as an agent of Elizabethan spymasters, and the peril that brings for everyone in his orbit. Mistrust lends the dialogue an erotic shimmer – and neither knows who is being played. 'How sincere is a snog?' grins Bluemel. 'A question I ask myself after every snog …' Drama thrives in history's gaps. Adams has Kit scorn research for their Henry VI play: 'Sources? Are we to take direction from historians?' Gatwa doesn't share that sentiment himself, but mentions a note from Daniel Evans, their director: 'All that research is not going to teach you how to act the characters.' Even so, they enjoyed a research week, 'getting under the skin of that world, which doesn't feel too different from the world we're in now.' It's certainly a rollicking read. 'It starts fast, and they're deep into each other's lives, unpicking each other,' Gatwa says. 'When we first read the play there was a lift-off, it's so human – their attraction to each other, their jealousy and insecurities.' Adams drops 'some real deep cuts, lots of Easter eggs' for the drama nerds, says Bluemel. 'There's some beautiful passages. If you set yourself the challenge of writing dialogue for Marlowe and Shakespeare, you've got to write pretty gorgeous stuff, which Liz has. The play is rooted in history, but so much is exciting, fun conjecture – where we as actors can really enjoy ourselves.' Enjoying themselves on stage is what these actors signed up for – they'd both originally imagined theatre careers ('then TV got its greasy mitts on you,' teases Bluemel). Shuddering, Gatwa summons his training for screen acting. 'Do you remember the first time you saw yourself on camera? Horrible.' Bluemel, who dreamed of 'performing Shakespeare in a National Trust garden', still feels 'much more comfortable on stage – maybe because I can't watch myself'. He hasn't performed in Shakespeare since a student attempt in Cardiff as Leontes in The Winter's Tale, though 'I always have my ears pricked up to do some Shakespeare'. Gatwa followed Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet in Manchester with Emma Rice's riotous A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe. A more recent retooled classic was the National Theatre's audacious The Importance of Being Earnest. 'It was chaos every single night,' he beams. 'Delicious, delicious chaos.' Rather like Born With Teeth, he says, the show brandished a queer subtext that was hiding in plain sight. 'In academic conversations, there's a tendency to play that stuff down. It was nice to bring it out to the forefront.' Kit and Will were provincial lads who flourished in London. How about the actors playing them? Gatwa would travel up for auditions on the overnight bus from Glasgow ('Thirty quid!'). He waxes nostalgic: 'Megabus Gold, I loved it. You sleep all night, get into Victoria Station, brush your teeth and head off to your audition.' He tried out for a role in Shakespeare in Love in the West End just after being attacked by three strangers on his way home from a nightclub. 'I had just gotten jumped, and had big problems with my mouth,' he says, recalling the swelling that went on to explode during his meeting. 'I was in the audition for flipping Sonia Friedman [the leading impresario] and it popped. I left in the worst mood, but got the job.' In Gatwa's words, 'the best actors are all working at McDonald's'. The line between making it and not can feel arbitrary. 'A lot of right place, right time, and parts that lend themselves to you as an actor,' Bluemel confirms. 'I always think: if I was the casting director, would I cast me in this? Sometimes the stars align.' The Time Lord in the room is, of course, Doctor Who, the role that Gatwa has just relinquished after two not-uncontroversial seasons. Few roles are such magnets for unfiltered opinion – has he managed to tune out the chatter? 'I'm quite good at shutting the noise out,' he says. 'It's loud. But it's very cool and exciting to be in the middle of this huge thing – there's haters, there's lovers, it's all going on. It is an absolute gift of a job, and a gift of a community. The Whovians are so deeply in my heart, I can't tell you.' Quite apart from the challenge of making the character your own, is there any coaching for the attention around the series? 'Yes, there was, but I don't think it can ever prepare you for what it feels like. They put security outside my mum's house, my brother's house, and I would say: what could possibly be the need? And then the need comes.' Only someone who has stood at the eye of this storm can understand it. 'I was just at Glastonbury and bumped into Matt Smith in a club,' he adds, 'and we had great, deep chats about that job and how there'll never be another like it in our lifetimes. We'll never work that hard again. Never be as stimulated and stretched. It's also very exhausting, so it's lovely to delve into other projects.' Bluemel's roles too attract a fair degree of attention. So is there an ideal level of fame: offering opportunities but protecting you from intrusion? 'My ideal is to work on good stuff and make a living from it,' says Bluemel. 'Some of those big jobs, from a professional point of view, might be amazing, but at what cost? It changes people's lives irrevocably.' As a student, Gatwa was a go-go dancer at one of Glasgow's 'pivotal gay clubs. They had these shower cubicles that were open to the club. I would dance in the showers in a pair of hot pants and next morning wake up and work on sonnets.' Is dancing good for confidence? 'You need a lot of front – or a lot of shots! Yes, it was good for confidence, chatting to different people every night. Go-go dancing sets you up for life!' Born With Teeth may not require hot pants, but it has required both actors to let go of some inhibitions. Movement director Ira Mandela Siobhan prescribed some initial trust exercises. 'When someone's falling into your arms, lifting you up, throwing you around, a trust builds,' Gatwa says. 'There's all sorts of push and pull,' adds Bluemel – the performance will involve 'a high adrenaline vulnerability'. Gatwa needs the bathroom, so we wrap up, giving Bluemel the last word on Born With Teeth. 'It feels modern and current,' he says. 'A clash of ambitions, jealousy, romance – ultimately, two very complicated people who can't decide what they think of each other. I hope it feels like a horny Elizabethan whirlwind.' Born With Teeth is at Wyndham's theatre, London, 13 August until 1 November
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Indian film board criticised for cutting ‘overly sensual' Superman kisses
As Indian cinemagoers watched the latest Superman film, many noticed something was amiss. On two occasions as the superhero leaned in for a kiss with Lois Lane, the film suddenly jumped forward, cutting to the aftermath of an embrace. India's censor board had deemed the kissing scenes, including a 33-second smooch, to be 'overly sensual' for Indian audiences and demanded they be cut from the film before its cinematic release. The cuts have prompted an outcry from some viewers, who accused the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of making arbitrary, overly moralistic demands and having double standards by allowing heavy violence and misogyny to be depicted in Indian films but cutting a kissing scene from a Hollywood film. 'CBFC would allow horrific scenes of violence and sexual assault in a U-certified film that kids are freely allowed to watch, but won't allow consensual kissing in a U/A comic book movie that kids should watch under adult supervision,' one viewer said on social media. Another said: 'So, Superman is NOT allowed to kiss Lois Lane on Indian screens. But all sleazy leading men of Indian films are allowed to pull, grope, assault, stalk, slap, and do whatever they want with their heroines. Are you serious, Indian censor board?' Another fan criticised the jarring interruption caused by the crude cuts. 'The Indian censor board has embarrassed itself with the abrupt cuts they've made to the film. The 'morality' of censorship aside, the way they've managed to mangle the flow is atrocious,' they said. Indian cinema has long had an uncomfortable relationship with on-screen kissing. With the exception of a four-minute kissing scene in the 1933 film Karma, up until the 1990s on-screen caressing was largely kept to hugs or symbolised through imagery such as flowers. While attitudes have relaxed in recent years, the country remains largely conservative and widely religious, particularly outside of urban areas, and more intimate kissing scenes are still subject to the censor's knife. The censor board has also faced accusations of being overly political. The Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice was blocked from cinematic release last year after its director, Ali Abbasi, refused to make cuts demanded by the CBFC. 'I ran away from Iranian censorship only to meet corporate censorship of the US. Now India. Really?' Abbasi said. 'Censorship seems to be an epidemic at the moment.' Similarly, earlier this year censors in effect banned the release of Santosh, an internationally acclaimed film addressing police violence and misogyny in India, after demanding a list of cuts. Sandhya Suri, the film's director, called the cut requests 'disappointing and heartbreaking'.
Time Out
10 hours ago
- Time Out
NYC dogs can compete in a Superdog competition in honor of the 'Superman' movie
Your dog is super, of course. But is your dog extra Super, like Krypto in the new Superman movie? Now's the chance to find out, as a Superdog Look-Alike Contest is coming to NYC on Friday July 18 at 2pm in Manhattan West Plaza (385 9th Ave in New York City). Dog parents are invited to bring their furry friends of all breeds and sizes to compete for a $1,000 cash prize; register to participate here. "Whether your pup is a dead ringer for Krypto or just bursts with superhero spirit, this is your chance to show the world the true power of pets," the event organizers at Pumpkin Pet Insurance said in a press release. This tail-wagging celebration will honor the most iconic pup in the DC Universe with some solid prizes. Two lucky dogs will earn top honors: one crowned Best Krypto Lookalike and one recognized as the Most Unique, Unlike-Krypto contestant. Each one will will $1,000, plus a $2,500 donation to the Angel Fund at a veterinary clinic of each winner's choice. A panel of two expert judges will choose the winners, with help from audience reactions. If you haven't seen the new Superman movie yet, Time Out's film critic raves about sparky superdog Krypto. "A mundane-looking white pooch, he's a sidekick whose lack of proper training and licky nature makes him a menace to foes and friends alike," our Phil de Semlyen writes. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pumpkin 🐶🐱 (@pumpkincares) After a string of celebrity look-alike contests in NYC from Timothée Chalamet to Sean Evans, this contest puts pups in the spotlight. "The Krypto Look-Alike Contest is our way of spotlighting the hero inside every pet," Matt Sherman, Chief Marketing Officer of Pumpkin, said in a press release. "Whether your dog looks exactly like Krypto or simply channels his super-energy—no matter their size or breed—this contest celebrates the amazing role pets play as our everyday heroes." Per the brand, the newly launched PumpkinNow™ shows up for pet parents in minutes when care is critical for their pets. It's an urgent pay service that can cover up to 90 percent of eligible vet bills fast if pets get hurt or sick—even before pet parents have to pay the clinic.
