Cultural Dessert

Our first ever visit to the Chichester Festival Theatre was to the smaller Minerva auditorium to see Patrick Stewart as William Shakespeare in Edward Bond’s 1974 play ‘Bingo’ which looks at Shakespeare’s final days in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a high-quality production with an impressive cast but I wasn’t overly taken with the play. I was left with the feeling that I might have missed the point of what appeared to be a fairly miserable, factual tale. The historical detail was interesting but I found it to be a production to be admired rather than enjoyed. The high point was the appearance of Richard McCabe (who I last saw as Sir Toby Belch in ‘Twelfth Night’ reviewed here in November 2009) who stole the show with a single scene cameo as a Falstaffian Ben Jonson at the beginning of the second act.