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.

Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole

FRIENDS CLOSE, ENEMIES CLOSER

When Caesar returns to Rome from the wars a virtual dictator, Brutus and his republican friends resolve that his ambition must be curbed – which in Rome can mean only one thing: the great general must be assassinated. But once the deed is done, the idealistic conspirators must reckon with the forces of a new power bloc, led by Mark Antony and Caesar’s nephew Octavius. When their armies close at Philippi, will Caesar’s ghost be avenged?

Opposing dictatorship and republicanism, private virtue and mob violence, Shakespeare’s tense drama of high politics reveals the emotional currents that flow between men in power.

This production will employ Renaissance costumes and staging.

Royal Shakespeare Company

30 July – 29 November 2014

Directed by Maria Aberg

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Beautiful Vittoria begins an illicit affair, enlisting the help of her brother Flamenio to fool her husband. They soon find themselves snared in a web of corruption, passion and retribution as their pursuit of personal gain reaches an epic and bloody conclusion.  

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater

From 6 August (touring UK and USA)

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Old King Lear, weary of royal duties, proposes to break up his kingdom and divide it among his three daughters. But this rash generosity is cruelly repaid and Lear discovers too late the false values by which he has lived – and, in turn, the suffering common to all humanity.

Its tempestuous poetry shot through with touches of humour and moments of heart-rending simplicity, King Lear is one of the deepest artistic explorations of the human condition.

The Comedy of Errors

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Blanche McIntyre

Take one pair of estranged twin brothers (both called Antipholus), and one pair of estranged twin servants (both called Dromio), keep them in ignorance of each other and throw them into a city with a reputation for sorcery, and you have all the ingredients for theatrical chaos. One Antipholus is astonished by his foreign hospitality; the other enraged by the hostility of his home town. The Dromios, caught between the two, are soundly beaten for obeying all the wrong orders.

Basing his plot on a farce by Plautus, Shakespeare caps the mayhem of his Roman original to build up a hectic tale of violent cross-purposes, furious slapstick and social nightmare.

This production will employ Renaissance costumes and staging.