Elizabeth Bruce’s theatre reviews:
BROADWAY WORLD:
Reviews: South Africa's MIES JULIE Thunders Into Shakespeare Theatre
Into Shakespeare Theatre's stately Lansburgh Theatre comes a performance so powerful, so unrestrained, so visceral as to rip the bloody roots of power from the earth and hold them dripping above our astonished heads.
"Metamorphoses" by Mary Zimmerman at Arena Stage.
Photo by Teresa Wood
BWW Reviews: Mary Zimmerman's METAMORPHOSES Mesmerizes at Arena Stage
"Myths are public dreams," wrote the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, "and dreams are personal myths"-a sentiment echoed by the therapist in Mary Zimmerman's 'Metamorphoses,' now playing at Arena Stage. Yet, Zimmerman's 'Metamorphoses' is so much more than dream. It is theatre as ritual, as rite of passage deep as an archetype, humorous as a limerick, and as universal as our need to love. It is a full-scale baptism in the journey of the soul as it finds its way to love.
Reviews: Folger Theatre's ROMEO AND JULIET Rivets with Modern Relevance
MIES JULIE shakespeare theatre Thoko Ntshinga + Bongile Mantsai + Hilda Cronje and Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa
Photo: Murdo MacLeod
Woe unto the society that undervalues its teenage girls. From the Pakistani Malala Yousafzai's of today to the Joan of Arcs, Ruby Bridges, and Anne Franks of history, young womanhood's quest for self-determination challenges our social mores as few other phenomena do. In Folger Theatre's ROMEO AND JULIET, passionately directed by Aaron Posner, Juliet too is such a heroine, and this tragic tale of young love lost becomes a much deeper story of human rights denied.
Read Elizabeth’s many other reviews
for Broadway World here
MARYLAND THEATRE GUIDE:
Mhlekazi (Wha Wha) is Adonis with one of the seven actresses that play Venus. Photo by Keith Pattison.
Theatre Review: ‘Venus and Adonis’ by Isango Ensemble at Shakespeare Theatre Company
In the other half of its repertory tour at Shakespeare Theatre South Africa’s Isango Ensemble transformed the Bard’s poetic telling of the Venus and Adonis myth into a glorious, multi-dimensional and paradoxical journey of fate and desire and death.
Photo by Simon Annand.
Theatre Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by England’s Bristol Old Vic in Collaboration with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, the Kennedy Center’s 2014 International Theatre Festival
Once in a rare while, a work of art comes along that so utterly captures the capacity of the imagination that audiences can but weep with laughter and leap to their feet in splendid delight. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, presented by Britain’s Bristol Old Vic, in association with South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company, is just such a show.