Rupert Christiansen: “[These] efforts draw small but loyal audiences, usually very appreciative, and you might say at the very worst, that no harm is done. But for the critic these pop-up performances pose a quandary: how can one balance one’s desire to pat honest endeavour on the back with the sacred imperative of rigorously honest and unsentimental judgment?”
Is This The Golden Age Of Shakespeare?
“It is a heck of a lot of activity for a man who has been dead since 1616 and was once consigned to dusty textbooks – and it is a trend that I am not sure anyone would have predicted even in the Nineties when Shakespeare was performed regularly and well, but without generating the same enthusiasm.”
How Did The UK Become Such A Major Movie Production Center?
“Britain already had a world-class franchise, in the shape of the James Bond films – but they tend to only come along every three or four few years, whereas there were eight Potter movies in the space of a decade – which meant virtually continuous employment for literally thousands of film workers in this country.”