Shakespeare's Globe - 2008 update
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
SHAKESPEARE’S Globe has announced further details of its 2008 theatre season, which will be launched on Shakespeare’s birthday, Wednesday, April 23, with Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole’s production of King Lear.
In the title role of Shakespeare’s most profound tragedy will be David Calder whose extensive work for the Royal Shakespeare Company includes The Tempest (as Prospero) and The Merchant of Venice (as Shylock).
His more recent theatre credits include Rock ‘n’ Roll (Duke of York’s Theatre), Five Gold Rings and Conversations After a Burial (Almeida Theatre), and The Little Foxes (Donmar Warehouse). He is also well known for his television role as Dr Robert Bramwell in the series Bramwell.
King Lear will be designed by Jonathan Fensom whose credits include Happy Now? (National Theatre) and Pygmalion (Broadway); and composed by Claire van Kampen who was Director of Theatre Music at the Globe during its founding ten years. Her most recent projects include music for Neil La Bute’s Bash (Theatre of Memory), Boeing-Boeing (Comedy Theatre), Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (Guthrie Theater Minneapolis) and Clean House (Northampton).
The production, which runs until August 17, will employ Renaissance staging and costume.
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Jonathan Munby (Henry V, The Canterbury Tales) will direct Christopher Brandon as Lysander and Oliver Boot as Demetrius in the second Shakespeare production, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which runs from May 10 to October 4.
Boot has previously appeared at the Globe in In Extremis and Antony and Cleopatra. His television work includes ITV’s 2007 series The Time of Your Life (as Matt).
It will be designed by Mike Britton whose credits include The Vertical Hour and That Face (Royal Court), and Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare’s Globe); and composed by Olly Fox who has worked on numerous projects with the National Theatre, Old Vic, Royal Court and The Royal Shakespeare Company.
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In The Merry Wives of Windsor – June 8 to October 5 – Christopher Luscombe will direct Christopher Benjamin as Falstaff, Serena Evans as Mistress Page, Sarah Woodward as Mistress Ford and Sue Wallace as Mistress Quickly.
Benjamin’s credits include A Voyage Around my Father (Donmar Warehouse/Wyndams Theatre). Evans, though best known for her role as Sergeant Dawkins in TV’s The Thin Blue Line, has appeared on stage in Once in a Lifetime (National Theatre), Blue Eyes and Heels (Soho Theatre) and Candida (Oxford Stage Company).
Woodward’s recent work includes Present Laughter (National Theatre), the title role in Lady Macbeth (Regents Park Open Air Theatre) and The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare’s Globe). And Wallace’s recent stage credits include Enjoy and The Mortal Ash.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is designed by Janet Bird whose previous work with Luscombe includes The Comedy of Errors (Globe), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), The Rocky Horror Show (national tour), Enjoy and Arms and the Man.
The composer is Nigel Hess who has won numerous awards, including the New York Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Much Ado About Nothing and Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway.
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The 2008 season is entitled Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem – ‘the whole world is a playhouse’, the words traditionally said to have been the motto of the original Globe.
Read more about the 2008 season