Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars There is a moment in Jennifer Dick's four-actor adaptation of one of Shakespeare's second longest play when the audience for her Bard in the Botanics production in the Kibble Palace are goaded into joining in a chant of 'witches.' The rabble-rousing chorale is aimed at Vanessa Coffey's Queen Elizabeth, at the time the most powerful woman in the room. Cheerleader in chief is a would-be spin doctor who duly films the response, presumably with the aim of streaming it online. The moment is the perfect illustration of how political discourse can descend into ugly name-calling when populist ideologues dog-whistle their front-line cannon fodder into action. Neither is it hard to see parallels with those who today would chase female politicians down the street in packs, haranguing them as they go. This is the world whipped up with malevolent relish in Dick’s own production by Robert Elkin's Richard, a camouflage-clad bu...
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.