"A thoughtful and considered kick up the arse to conspiracy theorists and to patriarchy" - Michael Boyd, Artistic Director RSC
Cleopatra, La Pucelle, Ophelia, Shaw's St. Joan and Ibsen's Hedda - a handful of seminal roles for women in the classical canon. Janet Suzman has played them all and directed some. Here she examines their complexity and explores why only Cleopatra has an independence that allows her to speak to modern women.
None of these, regrettably, matches up to a Hamlet, but as she is grateful for the parts he did write, Suzman feels a lightly-barbed attack on those who doubt Shakespeare's authorship is way overdue. She also takes issue with received ideas on boy-actors playing mature women in Shakespeare's company, and reflects on how female characters in classical drama have not been on a level with their male counterparts. Today, on TV, film and the stage, this remains the case. Not Hamlet but Hamlette, please.

All twelve episodes from the first series of the TV action adventure following the swashbuckling exploits of Sinbad. In the city of Basra, after accidentally killing the son of the powerful Lord Akbari (Naveen Andrews), Sinbad's brother Jamil (Devon Anderson) is put to death as part of a blood debt. Cursed to spend no more than one night and day on dry land by his grandmother (Janet Suzman), Sinbad stows away onboard a vessel, the Providence, and soon embarks on perilous adventures accompanied by an odd mix of fellow passengers including Norse trader Gunnar (Elliot Cowan), thief Rina (Marama Corlett), wealthy African beauty Nala (Estella Daniels), ship's doctor Anwar (Dimitri Leonidas) and Cook (Junix Inocian). The episodes are: 'Pilot', 'Queen of the Water-Thieves', 'House of Games', 'Old Man of the Sea', 'Hunted', 'The Siren', 'Homecoming', 'Kuji', 'Eye of the Tiger', 'For Whom the Egg Shatters', 'Fiend or Friend?' and 'Land of the Dead'.

This powerful version of Chekhov's famous drama reflects the South African phenomenon of the 1990s. With the hindsight of the new millennium we can look back and see that the miracle did happen. The new order did take over from the old. The fruitless cherry orchard was chopped down. The old men who couldn't move with the times have been left behind and forgotten. Chekhov's great pre-revolutionary drama, dreaming of youthful energy replacing the worn-out inertia of a dying world, lends itself vividly to this new setting in post-revolutionary South Africa.