Matti Linnavuori[1]
Performance reviews reach new areas and new modes of writing. The first-ever review on Azerbaidjani puppet theatre in Critical Stages comes from Aydin Talibzade.
Mark Brown and Matti Linnavuori join forces in their correspondence about the festival of Baltic theatres held in Riga, Latvia.
Soila Lehtonen writes about Pirkko Saisio’s and Jussi Tuurna’s musical HOMO! in Finland’s National Theatre. The author-director and the composer name their work ‘an opera about odd people’.
From Central Europe, Sergio Lo Gatto looks at two German-Italian co-productions, of Bertolt Brecht and René Pollesch.
Oltita Cintec reviews Andrei Serban’s production of Hedda Gabler in Cluj Napoca’s Hungarian theatre in Romania.
Judit Csáki writes about Robert Alföldi’s Hamlet in the Hungarian National Theatre.
From outside of Europe, Selim Lander’s article deals with a Martinique playwright Gaël Octavia’s Congre et homard.
Hervé Guay explains the merits of Je pense à Yu, a Quebecoise play by Carole Fréchette on Chinese themes.
Instead of a geographical presentation, it would perhaps be even better to see the reviews section as articles about Shakespeare versus articles about playwrights other than Shakespeare. In addition to the Hungarian Hamlet, there is the Korean Tempest directed by Oh Tae-suk and reviewed by Hyun-sook Shin.
[1] Matti Linnavuori (born 1955) edits the Performance Reviews Section for Critical Stages. He is a free lance theatre critic for Finnish newspaper Satakunnan Kansa. He has also written and directed radio plays for YLE Finnish Broadcasting Company.
