Category: Adaptations & Reviews
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Hag-Seed – A Tempest Reimagined
A Coffee, Campfires & Shakespeare Review Every now and then a Shakespeare adaptation comes along that feels both playful and profound at the same time. Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood — part of the brilliant Hogarth Shakespeare Project — is exactly that. It’s humorous, warm-hearted, and deeply theatrical, yet beneath the wit lies a story about…
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Hamnet – film reflection
A quiet, emotive review of the Hamnet film adaptation, exploring grief, stillness, performance, and the spaces between — from Coffee, Campfires & Shakespeare.
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These Violent Delights – Chloe Gong
A thoughtful review of These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong, a dark Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, rich with politics, violence, and power.
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Campfire Review: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid
A Quick Brew Before We Begin Shakespeare retellings are one of my favourite kinds of escape. They feel like sitting down with an old friend — familiar, comforting — and then suddenly realising that friend has secrets you’ve never heard before. They let us revisit characters we thought we understood and ask: What if their…
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Adaptation Review: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
“There is nothing so solid, so real, as the light on a child’s face.” — Hamnet A Story Rooted in Truth — and Transformed by Imagination Set in late-1500s Stratford-upon-Avon, Hamnet takes a small historical footnote — the death of Shakespeare’s only son — and transforms it into a sweeping emotional epic.The historical timeline is…
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Adaptation Review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
A Modern Shrew for a Modern World As part of Vintage’s Hogarth Shakespeare project — a series inviting acclaimed contemporary writers to reimagine Shakespeare’s plays — Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl brings The Taming of the Shrew into the twenty-first century. It’s short, warm, and light-hearted; the kind of book best enjoyed with a cup of…
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If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio – Adaptation Review
A dark academia novel steeped in Shakespeare’s language and structure. Seven acting students live and breathe the Bard until art and life begin to blur, and tragedy takes centre stage.As the tension rises, M. L. Rio mirrors Shakespeare’s five-act form — ambition, betrayal, guilt, and catharsis unfold like scenes from Macbeth or King Lear.A haunting…