The Great Theatre of the World - Arcola Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
ADRIAN Mitchell’s translation of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s The Theatre of the World runs from July 12 to August 18, 2007 at London’s Arcola Theatre.
In Calderón’s dark, humorous and poetic masterpiece El Gran Teatro Del Mundo (1635), God is a theatre director and the world his stage manager. A King, Beauty, Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggar have just one chance to play their parts in life.
A dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age perfecting the innovative dramatic forms and genres of Lope de Vega, Calderón (1600 – 1681) is known for his poetic beauty, dramatic structure and philosophical depth in over 100 plays written throughout his life, first as court poet and later as priest.
The Theatre of the World will be directed by William Gaskill who returns to the Arcola following the critically acclaimed 2005 piece Carver, an adaptation of the short stories of Raymond Carver.
Between 1965 and 1972, Gaskill was artistic director of the Royal Court, where he not only directed premieres of plays by an entire generation of writers such as David Hare, John Arden, Edward Bond and Arnold Wesker, but also introduced many of Brecht’s works to the British theatre going audience. He worked alongside Laurence Olivier as a founding director of the National Theatre from its time at the Old Vic in 1963, and went on to form Joint Stock theatre group with Max Stafford Clark.
A contemporary of Gaskill’s at the Royal Court and described by Ken Tynan as “the British Mayakovsky”, Mitchell’s poetry and plays include adaptations of masterworks such as Weiss’s Marat/Sade for Peter Brook at the RSC in 1964, Peer Gynt, Gogol’s The Government Inspector, plus the lyrics to Peter Hall’s Animal Farm and the RSC’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Tickets: £13, £9 concession (except Saturday), Tuesdays “pay what you can”.
For more information call the box office on 020 7503 1646 or visit the website.