Revisiting Shakespeare's Great Female Characters
Mumbai Theatre Guide
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Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Revisiting Shakespeare's Great Female Characters
Whitney White, theatre professional loves Shakespeare, but has a problem with his female characters. She says in a piece by Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, "I don't just love Lady Macbeth. My favourite characters are also Juliet, Emilia, Cleopatra. But uh-oh, why do all those women die by act five?"
So, she did a boundary-breaking gig-theatre, ALL IS BUT FANTASY, to be staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in two parts. Akbar writes "It mixes characters from various Shakespeare plays: Lady Macbeth and Othello's Emilia in one, Juliet and Richard III in the other."
The show is a musical that looks at Shakespera's women from today's point of view. "So, for example, ALL IS BUT FANTASY, traces a line between the speech on abused women by Iago's wife, Emilia, and the rise in domestic abuse during the pandemic and subsequent years," notes Akbar, "She is trying to take the audience on the ride that her mind went on when she read the plays."
If some of the women from our great literature could speak and sing today, they'd have a lot to say too, about their their time and the interpretation of their lives and emotions by their creators!
"A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it."
Andrew O'Hagan
KALA GHODA ARTS FESTIVAL 2026
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ZEN KATHA
A WOMAN OR NOT TO BE
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