Latest news with #Shakespearean
Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Beloved Stratford Festival actor Michael Blake dies at 53
Toronto actor Michael Blake, who spent 10 seasons at the Stratford Festival, has died. In a news release, the festival called Blake, 53, 'one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He played an extraordinary variety of parts and did so with an ability and ease that was rare.' Blake was well known at Stratford for his Shakespearean roles, which included Macduff in 'Macbeth,' Master Page in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' Don John in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Cominius in 'Coriolanus,' the Duke of Clarence in 'Richard III,' Albany in 'King Lear' and Dumaine in 'All's Well That Ends Well.' In 2019, he played the lead in the festival's 'Othello.' In her review for the Star , Karen Fricker praised Blake's performance. 'Blake's Othello is beautifully spoken, poised and feline: in all ways attuned to the world around him,' she wrote. 'He's succeeded by contradicting in practice the low expectations that society has of him. Which is not to say he's crafty; he's savvy and principled.' Blake performed in 25 Stratford productions between 2011 and 2023, including 'Napoli Milionaria!' 'The School for Scandal,' 'All My Sons' and 'Tartuff.' The festival noted that Blake also appeared at theatres across Canada, and in film and television, including 'Due South,' 'The Expanse,' 'The Lost Symbol' and 'Murdoch Mysteries.' According to his biography, Blake was born in Toronto and graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. He played the adult Simba in the original Toronto run of the musical 'The Lion King'; was an inaugural member of the English acting company of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and was a member of the first graduating class of the Soulpepper Academy in Toronto. 'Each part Michael played was powerfully realized,' artistic director Antoni Cimolino said in the news release. 'His work was true and realistic. His portrayals had an integrity that was compelling. It drew you into his reality. 'We will all remember him both for his art and his person. He was a member of our artistic family and he will be deeply missed.' Funeral details have yet to be announced. The festival said it will dedicate a production to Blake's memory in 2026. This story has been edited from an earlier version that gave an incorrect age for Michael Blake.
Hamilton Spectator
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Beloved Stratford Festival actor Michael Blake dies at 54
Toronto actor Michael Blake, who spent 10 seasons at the Stratford Festival, has died. In a news release, the festival called Blake, 54, 'one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He played an extraordinary variety of parts and did so with an ability and ease that was rare.' Blake was well known at Stratford for his Shakespearean roles, which included Macduff in 'Macbeth,' Master Page in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' Don John in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Cominius in 'Coriolanus,' the Duke of Clarence in 'Richard III,' Albany in 'King Lear' and Dumaine in 'All's Well That Ends Well.' In 2019, he played the lead in the festival's 'Othello.' In her review for the Star , Karen Fricker praised Blake's performance. 'Blake's Othello is beautifully spoken, poised and feline: in all ways attuned to the world around him,' she wrote. 'He's succeeded by contradicting in practice the low expectations that society has of him. Which is not to say he's crafty; he's savvy and principled.' Blake performed in 25 Stratford productions between 2011 and 2023, including 'Napoli Milionaria!' 'The School for Scandal,' 'All My Sons' and 'Tartuff.' The festival noted that Blake also appeared at theatres across Canada, and in film and television, including 'Due South,' 'The Expanse,' 'The Lost Symbol' and 'Murdoch Mysteries.' According to his biography, Blake was born in Toronto and graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. He played the adult Simba in the original Toronto run of the musical 'The Lion King'; was an inaugural member of the English acting company of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and was a member of the first graduating class of the Soulpepper Academy in Toronto. 'Each part Michael played was powerfully realized,' artistic director Antoni Cimolino said in the news release. 'His work was true and realistic. His portrayals had an integrity that was compelling. It drew you into his reality. 'We will all remember him both for his art and his person. He was a member of our artistic family and he will be deeply missed.' Funeral details have yet to be announced. The festival said it will dedicate a production to Blake's memory in 2026.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Frank Barrie obituary
There is a dying breed of classically trained, romantic, heroic actors who should not be consigned to oblivion in theatrical memory, and Frank Barrie, who has died aged 88, is a notable example. The youngest leading actor at the Bristol Old Vic in the late 1960s, Barrie was always part of that noble tradition, one that stemmed from William Macready and Edmund Kean in the earlier Victorian era. A current reminder of it comes in Ralph Fiennes's intriguing evocation of Henry Irving in David Hare's new play Grace Pervades, but it is now largely forgotten. Barrie scored his biggest international success in a solo show about Macready (titled Macready!), which he wrote himself and which opened at the Northcott theatre, Exeter, in 1979 and then, after a triumphant season on Broadway, at the Arts in London. It subsequently toured in 65 countries. He put the extravagance and what might be unkindly dubbed 'affectation' of Macready, a great Shakespearean actor, into a contemporary perspective, with due acknowledgement of his attempts to modernise the theatre, a profession of which Macready was openly, and paradoxically, contemptuous. Two chairs, a table and a cloak were all it took. Barrie was delightful company, full of memories and anecdotes, rather like his contemporary stylists, Keith Baxter and John Fraser, who, unlike him, both committed their reminiscent stories to print. Tall and strikingly handsome, he impressed, as the critic Michael Ratcliffe once said, as a character actor of elegance, sympathy and wit. Another critic, Harold Hobson, while praising his Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet at the Bristol Old Vic as 'splendidly manly and romantic', added that few Mercutios could have lived with more swagger or died with more panache, or bitterness, than his. And yet his highest profile performance as far as today's public were concerned was probably that of Dot Cotton's smooth gentleman friend, Edward Bishop, in EasteEnders on television in 20101. Bishop was a local choirmaster whom Dot (June Brown) befriended but shied away from – when Bishop tried to up the affectionate tempo – on the reasonable grounds of her still being married. There were other television appearances – as Coriolanus and King Lear for RTE in Dublin in the early 70s; in the BBC's Doctors soap (2008 and 2012, different characters); as Eglamour in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1984); and in a screen version of Macready! in 1985. But Barrie's natural habitat was the stage. He was born Frank Smith in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, as the third child of Annie (nee Carter) and Arthur, a press photographer. The family moved to York after their house was bombed in the second world war. He attended Archbishop Holgate's school in the city, and took part in the York Mystery Plays before taking a degree in English at Hull University, where he was president of the debating society and where he met a fellow student, Mary Lloyd, whom he married in 1960. There followed four years in weekly and fortnightly rep – in Harrogate, Ipswich, Salisbury and Sheringham, Norfolk – changing his surname to Barrie (in memory of an admired actor, John Barrie) on the advice of an agent before joining the Bristol Old Vic in 1965. Over several seasons there he played Oedipus Rex, Richard II, Long John Silver, Alfie (in Bill Naughton's play), Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Lucio in a Tyrone Guthrie production of Measure for Measure. In 10 years he had acquired a huge range of experience, and a complete skill set for the opportunity that now arose to join Laurence Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1969. He was recommended to Olivier by his assistant, Donald MacKechnie, who had worked with Barrie on Macready! He auditioned for, and was immediately cast as, Mirabell in Congreve's Restoration masterpiece The Way of the World (opposite Geraldine McEwan), then Wendoll in Thomas Heywood's stark Jacobean domestic tragedy, A Woman Killed with Kindness, Brachiano in John Webster's glittering The White Devil, Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (Olivier as Shylock, Joan Plowright as Portia, Jonathan Miller director) and Barelli in Pirandello's Rules of the Games, adapted by Hare, with Plowright and Paul Scofield. In the 70s he played Hamlet and Richard III for the director Richard Digby Day at the Theatre Royal, York, where he returned in 1984 as a tremendous Morose, the grumpy old noise-hating character, in Ben Jonson's Epicœne, or The Silent Woman. Also, in the York Minster, he played Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and, in Regent's Park, London, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His later London credits included Royce Ryton's Motherdear (1980) at the Ambassadors, a right royal predecessor of The Crown, set in Sandringham House between 1888 and 1922, in which he stalked magnificently as the prime minister Lord Rosebery opposite Margaret Lockwood as the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra; another Way of the World at the Haymarket in 1984, playing the adulterous, conniving Fainall in a superb revival by William Gaskill headlined by Maggie Smith and Plowright, and a 1991 revival at Wyndham's of Christopher Hampton's inverted Molière-sque comedy, The Philanthropist, as the self-centred bestselling novelist Braham, alongside Edward Fox and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Two delightful, nostalgic gems in tiny London theatres marked his farewell to the stage: as Noël Coward in Chris Burgess's Lunch with Marlene (Kate O'Mara as a slinky Dietrich) at the New End in Hampstead in 2009, and – a real collector's item – as the financier Sir Claude Burton in Ivor Novello's last musical, Gay's the Word (lyrics by Alan Melville) at the Jermyn Street theatre in 2013. Frank and Mary lived in Brockley, south London, for their last 40 years. He is survived by Mary, their daughter, Julia, grandchildren Becky and Dudley, great-granddaughter Pearl and his older siblings, Nancy and Harold. Frank Barrie (Frank Smith), actor, born 19 September 1936; died 30 June 2025
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Student performers wear hearts on sleeves
A Dunedin secondary school's theatre group has placed Shakespearean women in a Gen Z world. Trinity Catholic College's The Bardchelor imagined what it would be like if four Shakespeare heroines — Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Titania (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Ophelia (Hamlet) and Katherine (The Taming of the Shrew) — were contestants on the reality TV show The Bachelor. In the scene, written by Trinity head of drama and dance Erica Ward, the four were competing for Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. The group performed the parody at the Dunedin Theatrefest on Saturday with five other schools and the Dunedin Repertory Society. Ms Ward said it was a successful day with performers of all ages taking part. The purpose of the festival was for the students to receive feedback and improve their performances. Ms Ward said she chose the different Shakespearean characters based on their personalities for the parody. Benedick, the wilful lord, ended up choosing himself instead of any of the dames presented to him. Ms Ward said a lot of the performances were devised by the schools with their own inspiration and content. "It was really special to see lots of original works." Groups from Logan Park High School, Dunedin Repertory Society and Queen's High School were chosen to advance to the regional stage of the Theatrefest contest on August 24. Theatrefest results Magic Moment Trinity Catholic College: The Case of the Missing Mug: Inspectors Entrance Queen's High School: Seacliff: Opening Imagery Columba College: Housekeeping: Collaborative Creation Queen's High School: Tangiwai: Physical Imagery Columba College: A Friend for Karen: Karen's Tantrum Columba College: A Friend for Karen: Original Comedic Script Merit Awards Acting: Columba College: A Friend for Karen: Bethan Mundy Acting: Trinity Catholic College: The Case of the Missing Mug: Riley Culling Acting: Dunedin Repertory Society: The Importance of Being Earnest: Riley McIntosh Acting: Trinity Catholic College: The Bardchelor: Joseph Kelly Acting: Trinity Catholic College: The Bardchelor: Meadow Stewart Acting: John McGlashan College: The Real Housewives of Colchis: Jess Mundy Acting: John McGlashan College: The Real Housewives of Colchis: Glenn Ericsson Directing: Queen's High School: Seacliff Ensemble: Queen's High School: Seacliff Ensemble: Queen's High School: Tangiwai Overall design: John McGlashan College: The Real Housewives of Colchis Overall design: Logan Park High School: Poetic Descent Distinction Awards Acting: Dunedin Repertory Society: The Importance of Being Earnest: Rowan Metreyeon Direction: Logan Park High School: Poetic Descent: Finn Trotman-Ericsson Production of Comedy/Farce: Dunedin Repertory Society: The Importance of Being Earnest
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Here's why Jeffrey Epstein's tangled web is conspiratorial catnip
These are salad days for the likes of Joseph Uscinski, who spends his time peering down rabbit holes and poking in the dark spaces where weird and woolly things grow. There are loads of conspiracy theories out there, the granddaddy of them all being the conjecture surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. But most tend to fade and be forgotten, said Uscinski, who teaches political science at the University of Miami, where he studies public opinion and mass media, with a focus on conspiracies. 'Only a select few will attract a large number of believers, have movies made... get talked about by politicians,' Uscinski said. The Jeffrey Epstein saga has all the elements of one of those top-shelf intrigues, with an added Shakespearean twist — a president whose political rise has been fueled by outlandish conspiracy theories and now faces a backlash from some of his most faithful devotees, as he tries to wriggle free from a deceitful web of his own design. Delicious, especially if you enjoy your schadenfreude served piping hot. The known facts are these: Epstein was an eye-poppingly wealthy financier, luxe man-about-Manhattan and convicted sex offender who sexually trafficked women and girls. In 2008, he agreed to an exceedingly lenient plea deal with federal prosecutors that resulted in a 13-month prison sentence, with freedom granted 12 hours a day, six days a week, under a work-release program. A decade later, an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald identified scores of alleged survivors of sexual abuse by Epstein and some of his associates. In 2019, a new federal criminal case was brought against him. About a month after being arrested, Epstein was found dead in his cell at a jail in New York City. Investigators ruled Epstein's death a suicide. An A-list fixture of the upper-crust social scene, Epstein has been linked in court documents with a galaxy of celebrities from the worlds of Hollywood, business and politics. It's an article of faith among some true believers — particularly within the MAGA movement — that a secret list of those serviced by Epstein's sexual enterprise exists somewhere in the bowels of the federal government, hidden by agents of the hated, anti-Trump 'deep state.' In a Fox News interview in February, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said a list of Epstein's clients was 'sitting on my desk right now to review,' with its public release seemingly just a matter of time. Then, like one of Trump's threatened tariffs, the list — or 'list' — abruptly vanished. There was no such thing, the Justice Department announced earlier this month, along with a finding that Epstein had, in fact, killed himself and was not, as some assert, murdered by forces wishing to silence him. A piqued president urged everyone to move on and forget about Epstein. 'Somebody that nobody cares about,' sniffed Trump, who moved in many of the same social circles as Epstein but now downplays their yearslong friendship. All in all, conspiratorial catnip. 'Saying there are files and then saying there aren't files... setting up some expectation for revelations and then insisting that actually there's nothing there' has only deepened the well of suspicion, said Kathryn Olmsted, a UC Davis conspiracy expert who's studied past instances of government deflection and deception involving the CIA and FBI, among others. Unlike some of the crackpot stuff she's heard — like Bill and Hillary Clinton murdering Joan Rivers to cover up Michelle Obama's transgender identity — the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein have at least some grounding in reality. 'He was very rich and powerful and he associated with some of the most powerful and richest people in the world, including members of both the Democratic and Republican parties,' Olmsted said. 'And he was trafficking girls. There's an actual crime at the heart of this. It's not just something that people have made up out of thin air.' That's the thing that gives the Epstein conspiracy theories their distinctly frothy frisson: a blending of vital ingredients, one very old and the other comparatively new. False allegations of child abuse date back to the blood libel of the Middle Ages and the assertion that Jews tortured and murdered Christian children as part of their ceremonial worship. From there, a through line can be traced all the way to the 2016 'Pizzagate' conspiracy, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and her top aides were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor. Truly vile stuff. Take that ancient trope and marry it to a modern lack of faith in the federal government and its institutions and you're gifted with an endless source of lurid speculation. 'The number of threads that you can pull out of [the Epstein] fabric are many,' said retired University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg, another conspiracy expert. 'And they're going to be long.' Democrats, for their part, are eagerly fanning the controversy, as a way to undermine Trump and drive a wedge in his granite-firm base. 'He said he was going to release [the complete Epstein files] and now he's saying there's nothing to see here and appears to be wanting to sweep the whole thing under the rug,' Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who played a prominent role in the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, taunted on MSNBC. 'There is overwhelming bipartisan, popular demand, congressional demand, to release all of this stuff.' Indeed, Trump need only look in one of his gilded mirrors to see what's driven years of fevered Epstein obsession. 'He built a coalition of people who have these beliefs,' said the University of Miami's Uscinski. 'And I think he's learned that once you build a coalition of conspiracy theorists, you can't get them to [stop believing]. They came to him because he was telling them what they want. He can't turn around and do the opposite now.' Oh, what a tangled web we weave...
