Murray Bramwell talks with director Geoffrey Rush and actors Paul Blackwell and Tony Taylor about The Popular Mechanicals, which opens for funny business in the Playhouse tonight.

They have become known as the Rude Mechanicals. They are the artisans led by the redoubtable Peter Quince who perform The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe for the royal court in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their play is theatrically preposterous, hilarious, endearing and contains some …

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King Lear
by William Shakespeare
State Theatre Company
Playhouse

This year the State Theatre Company’s sad tale for winter is King Lear but, unlike the John Gaden/Gale Edwards/Mary Moore production of The Winter’s Tale last year, in Lear the considerable talents of the team seem more at odds than in unison.

Mary Moore’s sooty cavernous set, with inky wash backdrop and a huge obsidian dish which splits open amidst Les Gilbert’s terra-crunching soundtrack, portends a dark purpose for a production …

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