Titus Andronicus

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Lucy Bailey

BRUTALITY OF THE HIGHEST ORDER

Returning to Rome from a war against the Goths, the general Titus Andronicus brings with him the queen Tamora and her three sons as prisoners of war. Titus’ sacrifice of Tamora’s eldest son to appease the ghosts of his dead sons, and his decision to refuse to accept the title of emperor, initiates a terrible cycle of mutilation, rape and murder. And all the while, at the centre of the nightmare, there moves the villainous, self-delighting Aaron.

Grotesquely violent and daringly experimental, Titus was the smash hit of Shakespeare’s early career, and is written with a ghoulish energy he was never to repeat elsewhere.

This production revisits Lucy Bailey’s spectacular Globe production of 2006.

The Shakespeare Theater Company

Sidney Harman Hall

Henry IV, Part 1

Directed by Michael Kahn

March 25 – June 7, 2014

“The better part of valor is, discretion.”

A young prince must decide between tavern roughhousing and the burden of his father’s legacy, in the coming-of-age story of heroism, corruption and war. STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn directs the masterful Stacy Keach (King Lear, Macbeth) who plays Shakespeare’s beloved character, Falstaff.

Chicago Shakespeare Festival

April 29 – June 15, 2014

Director: Christopher Luscombe

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“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!” In a rousing finale to the 2014 season, Shakespeare’s powerful history play takes center stage in our magnificent Courtyard Theater for the very first time. Acclaimed British director Christopher Luscombe, whose work has been featured at the Royal Shakespeare Company, sheds new light on the Bard’s legendary coming-of-age story. Against all odds, a charismatic young monarch confronted by the ferocity of war proves his worth as a man—and king. Henry V is Shakespeare’s rallying cry, celebrating the power of language to summon battlefields from thin air and ignite our souls to action.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

5 – 10 May (performed in Gujarati)

When Bharatram (Bertram) flees his native Gujarat for Bombay, his mother’s ward Heli (Helena), desperately in love, decides to pursue him. But Bharatram feels differently, and attaches two obstructive conditions to their marriage – conditions he is sure will never be met.

20th-century India stands in for Renaissance France in this joyful, imaginative production of a play that reverses all the usual expectations of Shakespearean comedy.

Antony and Cleopatra

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Jonathan Munby

TWO LOVERS ARE BLOWN APART BY LOVE AND WAR

Cleopatra, the alluring and fascinatingly ambiguous Queen of Egypt, has bewitched the great Mark Antony, soldier, campaigner and now one of the three rulers of the Roman Empire. When Antony quarrels with his fellow leaders and throws in his lot with Cleopatra, his infatuation threatens to split the Empire in two.

Roman virtue and Eastern vice, transcendent love and realpolitik combine in Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s greatest exploration of the conflicting claims of sex and power, all expressed in a tragic poetry of breathtaking beauty and magnificence.

Richard III

• June 3 – October 10, 2014
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland, OR – Allen Elizabethan Theatre
• By William Shakespeare | Directed by James Bundy

Bad to the Bone

The king you love to hate returns. Richard III is the cunning royal reprobate so deformed in body and spirit that even his mother rues the day he was born. His path to England’s throne is murderous. He rules with a tyrant’s fist. He’s backstabbing and bloody. Yet he is so mesmerizing that we dare you to look away. Historically, Richard III may not have been such a villain, but where’s the fun in that? Shakespeare’s reworking of history is tragedy at its best—deep, rich and unapologetic.