Syracuse Shakespeare Festival

April 4 – April 14, 2014

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Our second plunge into 17th century French comedy gives us even more laughs than last year’s Molierean tickler.  It’s another comedy by a French icon, The Suitors, by Jean Racine, Judith Harris directing; one of the most hilarious French plays ever written, Racine’s only comedy (1688), tells of a judge named Nigaud who has lost his mind from overwork but is still possessed with the desire to go to court and try cases day and night.  After a brief intermission the second half of this double bill gives you, Commedia dell’Arte, Lynn Barbato directing; the roots of improvisation date back to 16th century Italy where “stock” character types mocked social conventions and they’ll be mocking unconventionally for your laughter and delight.   

Folger Theatre

April 17 – May 25, 2014

Directed by Ben Steinfeld and Jessie Austrian

Hamlet – Globe to Globe – Shakespeare’s Globe, London – World Tour

by William Shakespeare

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole and Bill Bruckhurst

A TWO-YEAR TOUR TO EVER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD

Learning of his father’s death, Prince Hamlet comes home to find his uncle married to his mother and installed on the Danish throne. At night, the ghost of the old king demands that Hamlet avenge his ‘foul and most unnatural murder’.

Encompassing political intrigue and sexual obsession, philosophical reflection and violent action, tragic depth and wild humour, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s ‘poem unlimited’, a colossus in the story of the English language and the fullest expression of his genius.

Be at the start of a completely unprecedented theatrical adventure and help us launch this two-year worldwide tour of our pared-down, small-scale Hamlet, which will visit all 205 nations on earth.

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.