Four Quartets, Theatre Royal, Bath, 25th May to 5th June, and on tour
T S Eliot liked the idea that his poetry might go beyond poetry just as Beethoven, in his late string quartets, wrote music beyond music. In a major post-pandemic, socially distanced event, Ralph Fiennes plumbs the mystery, the sense of loss and foreboding in a time of renewal between wars. Eliot defined the poems in his own voice, that of a trembling, portentous cadaver. Fiennes, the greatest actor and verse speaker of his generation, “performs” and renews the lines in a fully designed (by Hildegard Bechtler) stage premiere. Co-produced with the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, the show goes there after Bath, then on to Oxford and Cambridge.
The Death of a Black Man, Hampstead Theatre, 28th May to 10th July
A second look in a Black Lives Matter context for Alfred Fagon’s 1975 comedy of money-making, wheeler-dealing, and sky-high ambition in a Chelsea flat, first seen on Hampstead’s old portakabin stage. Fagon was one of several notable black British playwrights (he died in 1986) of that period. Born in Jamaica, he served in the British army and was also a poet, welder, boxer and actor. The Alfred Fagon award for new black playwrights is named in his honour. Dawn Walton’s revival might be a look black in anger, but in laughter, too.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Globe, 19th May to 30th October
Let’s hope this joyful, magical play survives staggered arrival times, no intervals, and seating in the yard (still priced at £5). And will Puck be able to come among us and ask for our hands “if we be friends”? Sophie Russell is a female Bottom away with the fairies; she doubles as spoilsport Malvolio in Twelfth Night later in the season.
