Medicine, Edinburgh International Festival, 4th to 29th August
The Edinburgh festivals return in a slimmed-down model with concerts and plays restricted to a running time of about 90 minutes. The EIF often overlaps with the fringe, and the Traverse Theatre—always a dynamic social hub of both operations—offers the latest from the brilliant Irish playwright Enda Walsh. Medicine is a dark and absurdist piece about responses to mental health, as technical theatrics, stage and performance translate into a kind of therapy. A strong cast is led by Domhnall Gleeson.
The Mirror and the Light, Gielgud Theatre, 23rd September to 28th November
Hilary Mantel has adapted the final chapter of her Wolf Hall trilogy for the Royal Shakespeare Company with the actor Ben Miles (who plays Thomas Cromwell). Interesting that the RSC, which presented the first two novels on stage in 2014, is turning to “ersatz” fictional accounts of Tudor history rather than plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The trend was apparent in 2017 when, less successfully, it staged Robert Harris’s Imperium, no match for Shakespeare’s Roman history plays.
Hamlet, Young Vic, 25th September to 13th November
Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet in 1899; Frances de la Tour in 1979. In recent years, the role has been successfully taken on by Maxine Peake, Ruth Negga and Michelle Terry. But there might be something extra special brewing here, with powerful Cush Jumbo, best known for The Good Wife on television, who has won Shakespearean spurs as both Rosalind and Mark Antony.
