The Royal Shakespeare Company has announced its summer 2015 season, highlights of which include a pairing of The Merchant of Venice and Othello and a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman to mark 100 years since the playwright’s birth.
RSC artistic director Gregory Doran said, “I’m looking forward to a summer of great theatre. We have a fantastic programme for 2015 with some truly exciting actors and directors on board.
“We mark the Arthur Miller centenary with one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, Death of a Salesman, and we’ve taken Venice as a starting point for the summer season.
“We’ve programmed main stage work which draws on our heritage as the world’s greatest Shakespeare company, and we celebrate the Swan Theatre as the home of work by Shakespeare’s contemporaries with powerful plays by Marlowe, Ford and Jonson which resonate with Shakespeare’s themes and the Venice setting as they too explore the idea of the outsider.”
The summer 2015 season opens with Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about failed dreams and thwarted ambition. Gregory Doran directs Antony Sher in the role of Willy Loman, the downtrodden salesman of the title.
Alex Hassell, who plays Prince Hal alongside Antony Sher’s Falstaff in the RSC’s current productions of Henry IV Parts I and II, will play Willy’s eldest son Biff. Death of a Salesman runs from 26 March until 2 May.
The repertoire continues with two plays set in Venice: Shakespeare’s uncompromising tragedies The Merchant of Venice and Othello.
The Merchant of Venice will be directed by Polly Findlay, her first Shakespeare play for the RSC. Her production of Arden of Faversham is currently running in the Swan Theatre as part of the Roaring Girls season. She directed Tim Price’s Protest Song in The Shed at the National Theatre in 2013 and will direct Treasure Island at the National Theatre at the end of 2014. The Merchant of Venice runs from 14 May until 2 September.
Othello will be directed by Iqbal Khan. His last play for the RSC was the 2012 production of Much Ado About Nothing which was set in India.
After more than a decade working in film and television on projects from Star Wars to Holby City, Hugh Quarshie returns to the RSC to play Othello. He last appeared with the company in 1996 in Faust and Julius Caesar.
Lucian Msamati returns to play Iago. His theatre work includes Little Revolution at the Almeida, James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner and The Comedy of Errors at the National Theatre, and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park at Wyndham’s Theatre. He last appeared at the RSC in Pericles in 2006. Othello runs from 4 June until 28 August.
The Venice season crosses both houses. Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta opens the season in the Swan Theatre.
It will be directed by Justin Audibert in his debut production for the RSC. He last worked as an assistant director with the company in 2009-2011 and is an artistic associate of HighTide Festival Theatre and an associate of Told by an Idiot. The Jew of Malta runs from 18 March until 8 September.
Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford, a rarely performed play, is a revenge tragedy published in 1633. It echoes Othello as it explores the destructive power of jealousy. It runs from 11 April until 24 June.
Matthew Dunster makes his RSC debut with the production. His most recent work includes Mametz for National Theatre Wales, Ché Walker and Arthur Darvill’s The Lightning Child at Shakespeare’s Globe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.
The final production is Ben Jonson’s satirical comedy Volpone, set in Venice. Former RSC artistic director Trevor Nunn directs, returning to the Swan Theatre which he created and opened in 1986. Henry Goodman returns to the company to play the lead role in Volpone which runs from 3 July until 12 September.
Following the success of this year’s First Encounter production of The Taming of the Shrew, the RSC has commissioned its next specially adapted production for younger audiences. The Famous Victories of Henry V condenses the three plays of Henry IV Parts I and II and Henry V into a 90-minute adventure for 8- to 13-year-olds.
After it opens in Stratford in June 2015, The Famous Victories of Henry V will tour to schools and theatres across England.
The RSC will also be working with 13 theatres and a vast range of amateur theatre makers across the UK to produce a play for the whole nation.
A professional RSC company will tour A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation for 12 weeks during the spring and summer of 2016. In each location a new group of amateur performers will play Bottom and the rude mechanicals while local schoolchildren will play Titania’s fairy train. The recruitment process for amateur performers will begin in spring 2015.
Further details are available at the RSC’s web site.