Shakespeare's Globe announces schedule for 2006

Shakespeare's Globe announces schedule for 2006

New artistic director Dominic Dromgoole announces SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE 2006 schedule entitled "The Edges of Rome" which will run from 5 May to 8 October 2006.

(Public Booking opens 13 Feb 2006)

CORIOLANUS
By William Shakespeare
from 5 May to 13 Aug 2006
Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, designed by Mike Britton. The production will employ Jacobean staging, clothing and music.
Constant strife exists between the powerful aristocracy and the hungry citizens of Rome. Many in the city yearn for peace but influential politicians know that their positions at home are secured by military campaigns abroad. Into this ferment strides the inflexible patrician general Caius Martius, fresh from his victory over the hated Volscians. Martius' deep distaste for the ordinary Roman people is exposed and exploited by his political rivals, and he is thrown into a humiliating exile. But Martius' appetite for war and violence is insatiable.

TITUS ANDRONICUS
By William Shakespeare
from 20 May to 6 Oct 2006
Directed by Lucy Bailey, designed by Rae Smith. The production will employ Elizabethan staging, clothing and music.
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 21 dead sons, and his decision to refuse to accept the title of emperor, initiates a terrible cycle of mutilation, rape and murder. At the centre of the nightmare moves the self-delighting Aaron.

ANTHONY & CLEOPATRA
By William Shakespeare
from 25 Jun to 8 Oct 2006
Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, designed by Mike Britton.
Out of the turmoil following the death of Julius Caesar a new status quo has emerged, the tri-partite leadership of Antony, Lepidus and Octavius. Threatened by the forces of Pompey, the three rulers need to present a united front, but Antony, the great soldier and once lieutenant to Caesar himself, has been bewitched by Cleopatra, the alluring and ambiguous Queen of Egypt. When he quarrels with his fellow leaders and throws in his lot with Cleopatra, Antony's infatuation splits the Roman Empire in two

COMEDY OF ERRORS
By William Shakespeare
from 22 Jul to 7 Oct 2006
Directed by Chris Luscombe, designed by Janet Bird.
Take two sets of estranged twin brothers (both called Antipholus) and two sets 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 the chief ingredients for theatrical chaos. One Antipholus is given gold in the street and invited to dinner by a woman who thinks she's his wife; the other is barred from his own house and rebuffed by his jeweller. Caught in between, the Dromios are soundly beaten for disobeying each other's orders.

UNDER THE BLACK FLAG : The early life, adventures and pyracies of the famous Long John Silver before he lost his leg
by Simon Bent
from 9 Jul to 12 Aug 2006
Directed by Roxana Silbert, designed by Laura Hopkins. The production features bare flesh and filthy language
King Charles is dead and Oliver Cromwell presides over the new Commonwealth. All should be well, but for a motley crew of disaffected radicals, chief among them John Silver, England under the 'Lord Protector' is little better than it was before. Only at sea, under a pirate flag, can the clamorous voices of republicanism, anarchy and theocracy be heard. Scraps of Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest all find echoes in the disordered mind of John Silver as he plies his violent trade along the Barbary Coast, turning every political enmity to his advantage and dodging the knife of his ruthless pursuer, Captain Mission. Based on the real life cutthroat of Stevenson's Treasure Island and set around the historical pirate republic of Rabat, this wild tale of high seas and low politics exposes the class hatreds and religious hypocrisy of the 17th century

IN EXTREMIS: THE STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE
by Howard Brenton
from 27 Aug - 7 Oct 2006.
A new spirit of philosophical and religious enquiry is growing in 12th-century France. In its vanguard is the brilliant Peter Abelard, a man of great learning, independence of mind, and sensuality. When he starts an affair with his equally brilliant but disastrously connected student Heloise, his conservative enemies find just the pretext they need to discredit him. In so doing they start a war of ideas that can only involve that arch-priest of medieval mysticism and austerity, Abbot and Popemaker, Bernard of Clairvaux.Through the joy and suffering of one of the greatest love stories of the middle ages, Howard Brenton explores the relationships between logic and religion, humanism and fundamentalism, faith and power.