theatre reviews

Richard III takes up the theme of ressentiment in a Shakespearean context. It also leads into the world explored by Lionel Trilling in Sincerity and Authenticity, to Diderot's thoughts about dramatic identity and the nature of the theatrical "self" as he set them down in Rameau's Nephew, and to Hegel's ruminations on "the honest soul".

Tom Stoppard's Progress surveys the playwright's work up to Arcadia, while Updating Tom Stoppard suggests some necessary improvements when staging Jumpers in the UK today. In 1972 Stoppard had imagined that philosophical relativism was the main thing to be worried about. Anthropological relativism is however a very much more serious and politically consequential threat.

'Director's Theatre' is the target of Fixing Strindberg: a list of whimsical, arbitrary, and wholly gratuitous directorial touches are discussed. The other two items are reviews.

"Richard III: the destructiveness of Ressentiment Man", The Salisbury Review, Spring 2003

"Tom Stoppard's Progress", Quadrant, January–February 1995

"Updating Tom Stoppard", The Salisbury Review, Winter 2003

"Fixing Strindberg, Shakespeare, et al", (in press) 2004

"Tony, Meet Cleo", Quadrant, November 2001

"Coriolanus", Quadrant, October 1993