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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Dominic Dromgoole.
Cast: David Calder
Description: Shakespeare's royal familial drama stars David Calder as the weary king. Directed by Dominic Dromgoole.
Trains: Tube: London Bridge/Mansion House/Southwark/St Paul's 
, Tube / Bus: 11, 15, 17, 23, 26, 45, 63, 76, 100 
Phone: 0207401 9919
Website: www.shakespeares-globe.org
Email: info@shakespearesglobe.com
Extra info: Pub, Food
Life's cruelties: David Calder's King Lear agonising over the death of daughter Cordelia (Jodie McNee), scales heights of pathos
I could hardly believe my eyes or ears, let alone my astonished heart.
In a location often associated with rough and unready Shakespeare, I soon found myself as overwhelmed by David Calder’s King Lear as any interpretation I have seen in 25 years.
It is the rare, real, tragic thing. It puts Sir Ian McKellen’s recent, winsome old King with the Royal Shakespeare Company where it belongs — deep in the shade. I use the qualifying word “soon” because initially Calder’s Lear, in a production by Dominic Dromgoole that fitfully draws the tragedy back to its proper, pagan setting, does not strike all the right notes.
This white-bearded monarch adopts the breezy air of a dyspeptic, Edwardian colonel, apparently untouched by infirmity of mind or body, who makes light of his old age. He revels in a talent to abuse each of his three disappointing daughters, without suggesting the pain that underlies the cursing bluster.
All that changes in a riveting trice. The two wicked sisters, Sally Bretton’s undangerous Goneril and Kellie Bright’s chilling Regan, who later throws away one of Gloucester’s excised eyes as if it were disagreable litter and removes the other herself, help tip the balance of his mind.
“Do not make me mad,” Calder snarls, as if he were referring to simple fury. But when he cries out “I shall go mad”, everything changes. His vacant, frightened gaze is an omen of pathetic, senile confusion.
The key to Calder’s fascinating Lear is, therefore, its terrible precariousness. What fascinating shifts between intelligence and mania, incipient senility and rending awareness he achieves, what piercing ironies! Out on the blasted heath, which Dromgoole briefly but vulgarly peoples with bedlamites, Lear recognises the world’s cruelty and embraces Trystan Gravelle’s over-mad Edgar but then loses his mental hold. Calder’s reunion with Cordelia and then his mumbled cries of “Howl”, each exclamation frailer than the last as he lets her corpse slip from his grasp, scales heights of pathos.
Unfortunately, Dromgoole’s statuesque production plumbs no primitive or depraved depths. Daniel Hawksford’s Edmund exudes neither evil nor danger. Joseph Mydell’s Gloucester suffers minimally. The use of musicians to evoke thunder and lightning, and the beautiful but ill-fitting intrusions of Claire van Kampen’s ancient music for one soulful singer, lamenting in Old English, smacks of a misplaced, gentille artiness to which Calder’s tremendous Lear never succumbs.
Information: 020 7401 9919
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
