Calendar

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.

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.

THE KILLER – Theater For A New Audience, Brooklyn, NC
By Eugène Ionesco
Newly Translated: Michael Feingold
Direction: Darko Tresnjak
Featuring Michael Shannon

May 17-June 29, 2014

A searing and darkly funny parable about violence and resistance, Ionesco’s The Killer premiered in Paris in 1959 and has become a modern classic of the Theatre of the Absurd. Berenger, Ionesco’s cheerful, well-meaning everyman, discovers a “radiant city” near his dismal urban home, a perpetually sunny, impeccably clean place full of marvelous architecture and delicious food. The one hitch: a serial murderer has been brazenly killing people there for so long that the authorities have given up trying to catch him.

Oscar nominee (Revolutionary Road) Michael Shannon plays Berenger. Our production will bring out the humor and taut film noir aura of this work, underscoring the cinematic allure of the murders, the futile chase, the bungled investigation and the climactic confrontation with the criminal. The exquisitely simple approach will spotlight powerful, precise acting and spare, sculptural design.

Shakespeare In The Park

June 3 – July 6, 2014

Directed by Jack O’Brien
Lily Rabe as Beatrice
Hamish Linklater as Benedick
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Hamish Linklater and Tony® nominee Lily Rabe return to the Park this summer as the wise-cracking, would-be lovers Beatrice and Benedick in the beloved romantic comedy MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Central Park becomes sun-drenched Sicily at the turn of the last century, where the heat of summer ignites the fevered passions of lovesick ladies in corsets and pining gentlemen spying from the verandah. Three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien directs this delightful skirmish of wit between two self-declared bachelors tricked by their mischief-making friends into falling in love against their will and in spite of their own hearts.