Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Patrice Chéreau, London: Bloomsbury (The Arden Shakespeare)

Abstract

London theatre critic Michael Coveney reviews Shakespeare in the Theatre: Patrice Chereau by Dominique Goy-Blanquet, tracing the career of a great director to its roots in a love for the Elizabethan theatre of Shakespeare and Marlowe, noting how a famous production of Richard II proved so influential that Shakespeare replaced Moliere as France’s most performed playwright. The author vividly evokes a modern chain of European theatre stemming from Brecht through two of Chereau’s most significant post-war mentors, Roger Planchon at the TNP, Villeurbanne, and Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo in Milan. Chereau, who died in 2013, was a director of remarkable taste and intellect, his productions of Marivaux redefining that playwright and his imagination creating a lunar landscape for the new plays of Jean-Marie Koltes, Jon Fosse and others and frequently a Shakespearean dimension, too. The book is a compendium of fascinating production detail and a compellingly argued history of a crucial period of European theatre in which Chereau played a leading role.