Bard from my own home: how I starred in a virtual Shakespeare play
(The Guardian Culture News)

How better to liven up lockdown than to stage the entire Shakespeare canon online? Our writer reports on his role in the webcam drama`Would you like to take part in a livestreamed performance of a Shakespeare play?` An innocent enough request, and tempting in these monochrome, locked-down times. At first I think I am being offered a part in Henry IV Part I, a very good play I dimly remember from A-level. Perhaps I could play the fiery Hotspur. But I realise it is actually Henry VI Part I - early Shakespeare, co-written with others, and reckoned by some to be the Bard´s weakest number. Oh well, you have to start somewhere. In any case it is too late. The die is cast, and so am I.The enterprising director is Robert Myles, whose response to the lockdown has been to set about mounting the entire Shakespearean canon in chronological order, livestreaming a play a week on YouTube under the banner of The Show Must Go Online. He´d done two already - The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew - but this was to be the first history. Whether it would make history was another matter. Continue reading...