A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lyric Hammersmith

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, LYRIC HAMMERSMITH Poetry vies with chaos in a hilarious take on a hallowed text

Poetry vies with chaos in a hilarious take on a hallowed text

Shakespeare’s plays have proved remarkably resilient to everything that’s been thrown at them down the years, including – in the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with its flowery bowers and fairies – cloying Victorian whimsy. Peter Brook’s white box production in 1970 effectively Tippexed out that option for the late 20th century. In turn, this version by the touring company Filter has put down a marker for the 21st.

Hamlet, Tobacco Factory, Bristol

HAMLET, TOBACCO FACTORY, BRISTOL Hamlet as wayward teen spirit

Hamlet as wayward teen spirit

Alan Mahon’s Hamlet in Andrew Hilton’s production for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory bristles with teen spirit and this is no bad thing. The Prince of Denmark, even before his father dies, is beset with the angst that goes with the territory of late adolescence. The production presents, on one level, a tragic coming of age drama, one in which the young heroes are consumed by madness and caught in the political and sexual machinations of their elders.

Callow, Hough, LPO, Vänskä, RFH

CALLOW, HOUGH, LPO, VÄNSKÄ, RFH Rainbow colours in Sibelius's masterly incidental music for 'The Tempest'

Rainbow colours in Sibelius's masterly incidental music for 'The Tempest'

2015, Sibelius anniversary year, yielded no London performances of the composer's last masterpiece, the Prospero's farewell of his incidental music to The Tempest. With Shakespeare400, 2016 has already made amends: even if the Bardic input came solely from Simon Callow doing all the voices, and summing up the plot – "elsewhere on the island", "meanwhile..." – Osmo Vänskä served up more of the original numbers for the 1926 Copenhagen production than I've encountered live before.

The Winter's Tale, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

THE WINTER'S TALE, SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE Shakespeare's tale is told quietly here but with tremendous charm and impact

Shakespeare's tale is told quietly here but with tremendous charm and impact

For a play about silence – its uncanny ability to tell the truth, to “persuade when speaking fails” – The Winter’s Tale is remarkably wordy. Of the sequence of late romances only Cymbeline comes close to the dense and elliptical verbal patterning we find ourselves tangled in here. But Michael Longhurst’s new production for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is so richly cast, its verse-speaking so expressive that we see straight through the often opaque text to the humanity and the humour beneath.

DVD: Bill

DVD: BILL An irreverent Shakespearean romp, not just for kids

An irreverent Shakespearean romp, not just for kids

The jokes come thick and fast in this debut feature from the team behind the BBC’s Horrible Histories. Released theatrically to little fanfare last autumn, Richard Bracewell’s Bill is a delight – a joyously funny film which wears its erudition lightly. An examination of Shakespeare’s lost early years, it follows the young writer’s unwitting embroilment in a fiendish Spanish plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

Gutman, LPO, Jurowski, RFH

GUTMAN, LPO, JUROWSKI, RFH A legendary cellist and a long Bruckner original face difficulties

A legendary cellist and a long Bruckner original face difficulties

Risk-taking is what gives so many of Vladimir Jurowski's concerts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra their special savour. But did two risks for last night's programme pay off? I was as excited as many Russians and hardcore Russophiles at the rare visit of legendary 73-year-old cellist Natalia Gutman, and it could only be interesting to hear the little-heard, hour-long first version of Bruckner's Third Symphony. But interesting, with a few flashes of inspiration, was as far as it went in both cases.

Roméo et Juliette, BBCSO, Davis, Barbican

ROMEO ET JULIETTE, BBCSO, DAVIS, BARBICAN Berlioz's fantastical invention superbly realised by Sir Andrew and company

Berlioz's fantastical invention superbly realised by Sir Andrew and company

It was another Davis, the late Colin rather than the very alive Andrew, who used to be master of Berlioz's phenomenally inventive opera for orchestra with its novel explanatory prologue and epilogue. I like to think he'd have been looking down fascinated by last night's very different miracle of pace, clarity and ideal blend of instrumental and vocal song.

Cymbeline, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

CYMBELINE, SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE This anonymous production fails to exploit this extraordinary theatre

This anonymous production fails to exploit this extraordinary theatre

There’s a happy, cyclical logic to this first production of Cymbeline – Shakespeare’s late tragicomedy of love and jealousy – at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The first play Shakespeare wrote for the candle-lit, indoor Blackfriars Playhouse, Cymbeline was quite literally made for this space. How disappointing, then, that director Sam Yates proves so wilfully blind to the theatre’s unique spatial and dramatic possibilities, delivering a production that might charitably be called faithful, but which more often feels simply blank.

Macbeth, Young Vic

MACBETH, YOUNG VIC Shakespeare seems ripped from the headlines in a bold new production

Shakespeare seems ripped from the headlines in a bold new production

Events have overtaken this Macbeth, dramatically heightening its queasy topicality. Not just brutal beheadings and torture, but the cost and collateral damage of conflict without end, and the scourge of a tyrant slaughtering his own people, strike one anew in the wake of recent debate. Carrie Cracknell’s interpretative, modern-dress production traps us in a military underground bunker, drained of light and colour – a Hell as acutely psychological as it is physical. Not for nothing does the doomed Macbeth fear the “diseased mind”.

Pericles, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

PERICLES, SAM WANAMAKER PLAYHOUSE This late romance is fairytale-charming, but its comedy is overpowering

This late romance is fairytale-charming, but its comedy is overpowering

Pericles is a play of voyages. Lands and landscapes crowd in, one after the other – Tyre, Tarsus, Ephesus, Antioch, Mitylene –  until our dramatic sea-legs are decidedly unsteady. The demands are great for any theatre, but for the Globe’s tiny, candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse they are impossible, freeing director Dominic Dromgoole to ignore spectacle and visual dislocation in favour of an emotionally-driven, chamber take on this late romance.