The Globe's Oresteia - casting announced
Theatre news
CASTING has been announced for Rory Mullarkey’s adaptation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, which plays at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre from Saturday, August 29 to Friday, October 16, 2015, as part of this summer’s Justice and Mercy season.
The line up includes Trevor Fox (as Aegisthus), Rosie Hilal (Electra), George Irving (Agamemnon/Apollo), Branka Katic (Athena), Joel MacCormack (Orestes) and Katy Stephens (Clytemnestra).
Completing the cast are Dennis Herdman, James Lailey, Petra Massey, Dean Nolan, Brendan O’Hea, Paul Rider and Dickon Tyrrell.
Previously Posted: Award-winning playwright Rory Mullarkey has been commissioned to adapt Aeschylus’s Oresteia for Adele Thomas’s forthcoming production, which plays at Shakespeare’s Globe from Saturday, August 29 to Friday, October 16, 2015, as part of this summer’s Justice and Mercy season.
Documenting the bitter cycle of violent retribution that afflicts the House of Atreus as a consequence of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, the Oresteia dramatises the shift away from the ‘natural law’ of the individual blood vendetta and towards a self-governing polis founded on principles of fair trial and punishment.
The Globe’s new production will explore the contemporary resonances in Aeschylus’s extraordinary portrait of a society in a state of great flux and turmoil.
Last year, Mullarkey won the George Devine Award (jointly with Alice Birch) and the Pinter Commission for The Wolf From the Door, which was produced at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2014, and the James Tait Prize for Cannibals, which opened at the Royal Exchange, Manchester in 2013.
Mullarkey was Writer-on-Attachment at the Royal Court in 2010 and was closely associated with the theatre’s international work, translating several Russian and Ukrainian plays, and Pearson Writer-in-Residence at the Royal Exchange in 2011. His other stage credits include Grandfathers (NT Shed), Decade (Headlong) and Come To Where I’m From (Paines Plough).
Mullarkey said: “I’m thrilled to be working with Adele Thomas to bring one of history’s great masterpieces to a new audience. The Globe space needs big language and big ideas, and Aeschylus’ trilogy provides that in spades, so I can’t wait to see how audiences respond to a fresh, new adaptation. It’s a monumental challenge, but an exciting one.”
Tickets: £5 – £42 (Globe Theatre); £10 – £60 (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse) – available by phone on +44 (0) 20 7401 9919, online at www.shakespearesglobe.com/ or from the box office in person (Monday to Saturday, 10am – 6pm, 8pm on performance days; Sundays, 10am – 5pm, 7pm on performance days).