This website is dedicated to the talented and beautiful British actress Rachael Stirling, star of film, TV, stage and radio.
I've just uploaded the screencaps from Episode 2 of Boy Meets Girl. Sorry this took me a little longer than expected but I've been quite busy with various things.
There'll be more updates from me over the coming weeks, including screencaps from Episodes 3 and 4 of Boy Meets Girl, screencaps from the films Redemption Road and The Young Victoria, and some new multimedia items as well.
Hope you enjoy the screencaps. 
Today I've concentrated on getting the gallery updated, particularly with photos from Rachael's various stage productions. I've been gathering together all of the photos from A Midsummer Night's Dream that I can find, and you can see those in the gallery now:
I've also added photos from the after party. I've updated the performance galleries for The Priory, A Woman of No Importance, Anna in the Tropics and The Taming of the Shrew.
In addition to this, I've added some photos from the Discover Wilton's Fundraising Gala in December 2007. Thank you very much to Philippa for those.
Finally, I've added a further review of A Midsummer Night's Dream, from The Times again, but a different reviewer.
I'll be back with more updates during the week.
Thanks to the moronic incompetence of South West Trains and a view of passengers as The Enemy rather than valued customers, I arrived at Kingston's Rose Theatre with -30 seconds to spare.
I know listening to someone's commuting woes is about as interesting as listening to their dreams, but the point is, I was in a really foul temper to start with. I emerged nearly three hours later with a fixed and goofy smile on my face, undismayed even by the prospect of my return journey. A Midsummer Night's Dream may, indeed, be "the silliest stuff that ever I heard", as Shakespeare cheerfully admits via Hippolyta in a helpful meta-commentary. But in this superlative new Peter Hall production, as feelgood shows go, this 400-year-old favourite is still as good as any.
Judi Dench as Titania may be too old — she first played the role some years before I was born — but what a lot she brings to it. She is every inch a queen here, the Queen of the Fairies but also the Virgin Queen of England, with richly embroidered Elizabethan dress, white ruff, and pearls sparkling in her dyed carroty hair.
The scene in which she falls for a translated Bottom, now adorned with an ass's head, is as comical as ever, yet you're also convinced Titania really is in the throes of passionate love. The line, "O, how I love thee, how I dote on thee!", spoken with such husky and tremulous longing, and with that permanent crack in her voice, is deeply touching — even in this most farcical of situations. When they awake, you're in no doubt how they have spent the night. One of Shakespeare's more scandalous jokes, like the mythical Pasiphae, the clear implication here is that Titania's affections have, er, crossed the species barrier.
Recent productions by Peter Hall have sometimes felt like the work of a master, but one whose best is behind him. This Dream is a tremendously energetic septuagenarian rebuttal of such impertinent thoughts, with some brilliant additions. Bottom's fluffed lines about the lion having deflowered his beloved (he means "devoured" — another bestiality joke) is made funnier still here with Peter Quince as an irascible prompt. "Devoured!"
What with the fairies' diabolical mischief-making, and the shambolic am-dram of the rude mechanicals, it's not unusual in many productions for the central story of the four lovers to take second or even third place, and feel like an interruption of the fun. Not here, thanks to some excellent acting from this strong quartet, thoroughly engaging with all their youthful impassioned energy. Tam Williams makes a boyish and impatient Lysander and Rachael Stirling is poignant and credible as poor plain Helena, the drama driven by Shakespeare's customary, richly humane sense that we are never so ludicrous, nor so lovable, as when we are in love, and in thrall to the random arrows of the "waggish boy".
Hall writes interestingly in an introduction of how the play is essentially "about marriage, the necessity of it, and how we can learn to be married". And there is another fine touch when Bottom the ass starts to laugh, and it comes out as a harsh bray. His besotted Titania joins in the laughter — again in a harsh, companionable bray, just as married couples do, growing together in habits, tastes, tics, everything.
But Hall also has the lovers portraying love as, emphatically, a compound of the physical as well as the spiritual, visibly panting as they chase after each other, and not just because they're out of breath. Lysander, suddenly in thrall to Helena thanks to Puck's potion, actually starts tearing his clothes off as soon as he sets eyes on her. Indeed, the whole play here seems to be richly mocking Helena's own lofty declaration in Act One, that "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind". On the contrary, love is very much rooted in the earthier emotions, and if it isn't, it won't work out.
As for the rude mechanicals, they're a delight. The last scene, when they finally stage their atrocious play of Pyramus and Thisbe, is genuinely, riotously funny. Oliver Chris shows us as pleasing a Bottom as you'll see this side of Copacabana beach, and Leon Williams is also excellent as Flute playing Thisbe. The whole troupe speak with Birmingham, or possibly Black Country, accents. I don't know whether this is a vague reference to Shakespeare's Warwickshire, but it is somehow funnier still to hear Bottom as a Brum Bum.
Elizabeth Bury is responsible for both set and costume, and achieves great things with the latter, at least. The hard, mirrored court of Athens looks a bit like an East German engineering college, which isn't very inspiring, even when you add shadowy trees and some twinkly stars. But the costumes are terrific, from Dame Judi's bejewelled and regal splendour to Bottom's daft galligaskins. As silly stuff goes, this Midsummer Night's Dream still casts its moonlit magic.
A quick update from me this evening, as I've just added all of the recent reviews for A Midsummer Night's Dream to the website.
I've also added a fantastic Evening Standard interview with Rachael, which you can read here: Rachael Stirling is a rising stage star — and she's in love with her ass (this refers to her boyfriend, Oliver Chris, who plays Bottom).
In the interview, Rachael mentions that she writes restaurant reviews for Diplomat magazine, and I have added those to the site as well. I recommend that you read them as they're very funny and well-written.
Finally, here are all of the reviews of the play that I could find. Some brilliant praise for Rachael in these; in fact in many cases, she is singled out as being the star of the show. I haven't seen a single bad word about her performance in any of them. Fantastic!
Who else has been to see the play or is planning to go?
When Judi Dench last played Titania in 1962 for Peter Hall in William Shakespeare's Dream, John F. Kennedy was in the White House, Nelson Mandela was starting a 27-year jail term and many thought the world would end with the Cuban missile crisis.
Incredibly, though, Dame Judi is back in the same role, once more under the supervision of Sir Peter — both having been to Buckingham Palace in the interim.
Hall's big idea in casting Dench as the Queen of the Fairies was to set her as a surrogate of Queen Elizabeth I. Yet in all honesty there is no great reason for this.
It is true Elizabeth was called the Fairy Queen, but little can disguise the fact that Dame Judi is doing her bit to boost a struggling, unsubsidised theatre. To that extent, at least, it is job done; the show is sold out for the rest of its run.
It is, moreover, a solid production, distinguished by the clarity of its diction. The rhythms and rhymes of the gorgeous poetry peal out with bell-like clarity — perhaps in deference to the director's hearing.
However, Sir Peter has always had a good ear for the Bard and this is also a pleasantly nimble, period performance, rattling through the play on a minimal, glossy black set that echoes with subtle sounds of the forest.
Meanwhile, Dame Judi weaves her own svelte magic, but is not much taxed by her role. Her main job is to fall in love with a donkey — after coming under a mischievous spell contrived by the jealous Fairy King, Oberon.
She is, however, utterly convincing in her amorousness as she tenderly strokes her beloved's long, hairy ears and kisses his damp, dilated nostrils.
Opposite her Charles Edwards makes an amusingly outre fairy king. Equipped with extra-large cape and bouffant hairdo, he has the look of a Doctor Who villain from the Seventies.
The donkey, who starts out as one of the play's 'rude mechanicals', is affably played by Oliver Chris as an excitable Brummie.
The young lovers who charge about the stage in their own lovestruck delirium add further zip and energy, with Rachael Stirling making one of life's eternal victims as Helena.
Otherwise, calling in James Bond's some-time boss to do this play is, you might say, a case of Dial M For Kingston.
This website is dedicated to the talented and beautiful British actress Rachael Stirling, star of film, TV, stage and radio.
If you would like to see more great images of Rachael, visit the gallery.
Add these dates to your diaries!
Find out when Rachael is next on TV in your area.
Thank you to LocateTV for providing this feature!
You can also comment on most of the pages here.
To counteract any hardcore sex within it, there’s a huge sense of humour and a huge sense of fun and frivolity and joy of life. It was so utterly believable that you never for a moment thought, ‘Fuck, there’s no reason why I’m standing here naked.’
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