Teddy Hempstead graduated with a Masters degree in English from Oxford in 2019, and has since worn many different hats. His powerful love for opera, Shakespeare, naturalist theatre, and ballet informs a wide-ranging critical perspective; his powerful love for talking to strangers, going outside, and hydration informs a less critical one.
It was about ten minutes into Russell Bolam’s fresh revival of David Mamet’s controversial ‘heterosexuality play’, The Woods, that I began wondering...
Since its first performance, in 1924, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen has enjoyed the kind of philosophical tug-of-war usually reserved for a muc...
Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi has enjoyed critical acclaim since 2001, in part thanks to its reputation as a modern novel of ‘accessible philosophy’....
Carmen, Bizet’s great tale of betrayal, boasts an admirably simple plot. Boy meets girl, both fall in love — girl gets bored, boy doesn’t, girl scorns...
As El Padre used to say, there are two things to see at an opera. The first is the opera — the second is people watching the opera. Never is this more...
Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy which pivots on the central conceit that a bad wife must be domesticated by force, is increasingly unp...