‘Season of Plenty’ follows a watershed year at the Globe with a season of fifteen plays including three world premières, an expansion of the Globe’s touring and the return of three Globe to Globe productions from last year’s festival.
Roger Allam will return to open the season as Prospero in Jeremy Herrin’s production of The Tempest. He won the Best Actor Olivier Award for his portrayal of Falstaff at the Globe in Henry IV parts 1 and 2. Making his Globe debut will be Colin Morgan, who won Best Actor in a Drama at the National Television Awards for his creation of the title role in Merlin. He has not left magic behind, this time appearing as Ariel, and Jessie Buckley, who competed in the TV casting for a new Nancy, will play Miranda. Director Jeremy Herrin returns to the Globe following his production of Much Ado about Nothing in 2011.
Continuing the theme of enchantment, one of Shakespeare’s most magical comedies A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be directed by the Globe’s Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole, and Michelle Terry, last at the Globe in Love’s Labour’s Lost, returns to play Titania.
The season’s trio of supernatural Shakespeares concludes with Macbeth, and stage and screen actress Eve Best will make her directorial debut at the helm of the Scottish Play, with Joseph Millson in the title role.
Opening at York Theatre Royal in June, the Globe will tour Shakespeare’s three plays about Henry VI and a country racked by civil war, visiting theatres and battlefields across the UK. Site-specific performances of Harry the Sixth, The Houses of York and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of the Duke of York will be staged at the historic battle sites of the Wars of the Roses—Towton, Tewkesbury, St Albans and Barnet—during its run at the Globe. Nick Bagnall directs.
Returning to new writing, the Globe will present three world premières in 2013. Gabriel will unite one of the world’s finest trumpet soloists, Alison Balsom—twice crowned ‘Female Artist of the Year’ at the Classic BRIT Awards—award-winning writer Samuel Adamson and director Dominic Dromgoole with Trevor Pinnock as musical consultant. Featuring Purcell and Handel played by The English Concert, the play brings to life real and imagined characters including Mary II and Queen Anne, as well as the composers, patrons, musicians and audience of seventeenth century London.
Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale is the director’s debut play which tells the eye-opening story of the first female students at Cambridge University and the prejudice they faced at the turn of the century. Globe regular John Dove directs.
Closing the season will be Che Walker’s anarchic take on Euripides, The Bacchae, The Lightning Chlld, directed by Matthew Dunster and with songs by Arthur Darvill—the creative team behind The Frontline at the Globe.
The Globe’s small-scale tours have become annual fixtures of the summer’s theatrical calendar, and will once again set off to new destinations.
King Lear, directed by Bill Buckhurst, will be the Globe’s first tour into Istanbul, and an all-female cast of The Taming of the Shrew directed by Joe Murphy will travel to Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing, following visits to many venues across the UK. Joseph Marcell, last at the Globe in Much Ado about Nothing, will play Lear, and joining him as Gloucester is the New Zealand stage and screen actor Rawiri Paratene who performed in the Maori Troilus and Cressida which opened Globe to Globe.
The ambition of the Globe to Globe festival lives on, as Shakespeare’s Globe welcomes back the Isango Ensemble from South Africa with its Venus and Adonis. Georgia’s Marjanishvili Theatre return with its As You Like It, and Belarus Free Theatre brings back its provocative production of King Lear.
Completing the international schedule is Footsbarn, which returns to the Globe with its carnival mix of street theatre, circus and mime, bring its tour of Indian Tempest. The breadth of Globe to Globe’s achievement was recently celebrated with a Special Award at the Critics Circle Awards.
The Globe on Screen season launches internationally, releasing three of its 2012 theatre productions to cinemas from April. Henry V, Twelfth Night and The Taming of The Shrew will be coming to screens in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. For more information about the cinema season visit the official web site at www.globeonscreen.com.
Theatre tickets are available through the box office on 020 7401 9919 or online at www.shakespearesglobe.com.