The Royal Shakespeare Company’s summer 2017 season, Rome, will include four of Shakespeare’s “most political and bloody plays” as it marks 2,000 years since the death of Roman poet Ovid.
RSC artistic director Gregory Doran said, “Ovid was probably Shakespeare’s greatest inspiration and his stories are sprinkled throughout his plays, most prominently the comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Today, some of those fantastical stories are being forgotten and our appreciation of Shakespeare's plays will be lessened if that happens.
“I’m delighted that Angus Jackson will be season director and he directs our opening production, Julius Caesar (3 March until 9 September 2017). This will be cross-cast with Antony and Cleopatra, directed by Iqbal Khan (director of 2015's Othello), and I’m very pleased Josette Simon returns to the company to play Cleopatra (11 March until 7 September).
“Titus Andronicus will join the season in the summer (23 June until 2 September), directed by Blanche McIntyre (currently directing The Two Noble Kinsmen in the Swan), and we conclude the programme with Angus’s production of Coriolanus (dates to be announced).”
Doran added, “in 2017 we also celebrate our many partnerships across the world as the fruits of these launch our Swan season. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s Snow in Midsummer (23 February until 25 March) is a reimagining of one of the most famous Chinese classical dramas and will be the first production here as part of our long-term cultural exchange programme with China.
“We’re thrilled to be working with Hull Truck Theatre and Hull UK City of Culture 2017 to stage Richard Bean’s hilarious new farce about the English Civil War, The Hypocrite (30 March until 29 April).
“We follow these productions with a return to the Roman theme. Shakespeare and his fellow writers also plundered Plautus's comedies for plots, so we asked Phil Porter to look at the work of this great Roman writer. He’s produced a wonderfully rude and funny new version, called Vice Versa (or the Decline and Fall of General Braggadocio at the Hands of his Canny Servant Dexter and Terence the Monkey) which runs from 11 May until 29 September.
“The story of the seductress Salomé takes place during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius and is the subject of Oscar Wilde's play Salomé, written in 1891. We’re including this grandly sumptuous play in the season to mark 50 years since the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. Owen Horsley will direct (2 June until 6 September).
“We’ll then revive my own production of Shakespeare’s great narrative poem Venus and Adonis, based on Ovid’s tale and first presented as a puppet masque with the Little Angel Theatre in 2004 (26 July until 4 August).
“The season concludes with Christopher Marlowe's Dido Queen of Carthage, directed by Kimberley Sykes, who’s been one of Erica Whyman's associate directors on our Dream 16 tour. Kimberley, like Owen, will be making her directing debut in the Swan (dates to be announced).”