The Roaring Girl - anyone seen it?

[inception]

Posted: 1/28/20 at 7:47pm

Last week I saw a student performance of a Thomad Middleton's 1622 play The Changeling. This got me curious about his work as I was until now unaware of this playwright. I was surprised to learn that what we know as Shakespeare's Macbeth is actually likely Middleton's revised edition from a performance 10 years after the first performance at court for James I.

The kast few days I have been reading through the Oxford Collected Works, published in 2010, and the first ever complete collection of Middleton's known works.

These include the comedy "The Roaring Girl," which according to this book had its first known revival since the 1600's in a 1951 Cambridge, Massachusetts production starring Nancy Walker (most famous as Rhoda's mother on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and of course the original Hilda Esterhazy in the 1944 OBC of On The Town). It was later produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1983 and starred Helen Mirren. The RSC did it a second time in 2014, and photos are easily found online from that production.

What I can't seem to find is any reports on this site from anyone who may have been in the UK in 2014 and seen it. Has anyone seen any production of this play? Or any other Middleton plays for that matter?

[imeldasturn]

Posted: 1/28/20 at 8:11pm

It was alright, but I'm not a big fan of city comedies. A couple of years ago I saw a very nice production of The Revenger's Tragedy, which is always great fan, and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is doing Women Beware Women this winter