Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - 2015/16 Season opens with short runs of four productions
Season preview
SHAKESPEARE’S Globe has announced the 2015/16 season in the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and it will open with short runs of four productions, including Luigi Rossi’s Orpheus – a new collaboration between Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Opera House.
The candlelit theatre will also host The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead, by award-winning poet and author Simon Armitage, and revivals of Thomas Tallis by Jessica Swale and Derek Walcott’s adaptation of his Nobel Prize-winning epic poem Omeros.
Following the huge success of L’Ormindo, the first collaboration between Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Opera, early music specialist Christian Curnyn returns to conduct the Orchestra of Early Opera Company in a new production of Orpheus (October 23 to November 15).
Directed by Keith Warner, designed by Nicky Shaw and choreographed by Karl Schreiner, the opera will be performed in English with a new translation by Christopher Cowell. The young and dynamic cast is led by British soprano Mary Bevan in the title role.
The Odyssey: Missing Presumed Dead (November 3 to November 14) represents the second time that award-winning poet and author Simon Armitage has joined forces with director Nick Bagnall. The two last collaborated on The Last Days of Troy, starring Lily Cole, which played at the Globe and the Royal Exchange in Manchester last summer.
This modern retelling of Homer’s epic (a co-production between Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and English Touring Theatre) follows a government minister on a diplomatic mission to Istanbul, who becomes Europe’s most wanted man after a bar brawl. Suddenly plunged into the past, he must grapple his way back to the present and to his family, fighting for survival against unworldly beings and unnatural phenomena.
Specially commissioned for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Thomas Tallis was described as “glorious” and “a skin-tingling pleasure” in reviews of its first run last year. Jessica Swale’s exploration of the life and work of the celebrated English composer follows him through the religious and political shifts of four Tudor monarchies.
Directed by Adele Thomas, the production will feature a quintet of singers from The Sixteen and runs from October 22 to November 8.
Derek Walcott’s haunting adaptation of his Nobel Prize-winning poem Omeros, directed by Bill Buckhurst, returns to the Playhouse from October 26 to October 31, following four extraordinary performances last year. Spanning time and continents, the piece transplants Achille, Hector and Helen to a St Lucian fishing village, underscoring their domestic dramas with broader themes of colonialism, ritual and untamed nature.
Priority booking for the 2015/16 Sam Wanamaker Playhouse season for Friends & Patrons of Shakespeare’s Globe opens on June 16. Public booking opens on July 6.