Former Royal Shakespeare Company international playwright-in-residence Tarell Alvin McCraney has created a stripped down, radical new version of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which will play in Stratford before transferring to the United States.
He has set the story in the late 1700s in Haiti when it is on the eve of revolution against France.
At the fringes of a war-torn empire, a man and woman have fallen passionately in love. But for a soldier sent to enforce the imperial will and the queen of a people intent on throwing off the yoke of empire, there is no place for personal desire.
Antony and Cleopatra are born to lead; their every action has consequences for the thousands of people caught within the orbit of their influence.
This will be an RSC co-production with The Public Theater, New York and GableStage, Miami.
The UK cast features Jonathan Cake as Mark Antony, Chukwudi Iwuji as Enobarbus, Samuel Collings as Octavius, Ash Hunter as Pompey, Alexas and Scarus and Sarah Niles as Charmian and Menas.
The US cast comprises Charise Castro-Smith (Octavia and Iras), Joaquina Kalukango (Cleopatra), Ian Lassiter (Agrippa and Thyreus), Chivas Michael (Mardian, Eros and soothsayer) and Henry Stram (Lepidus and Proculeius).
Tarell Alvin McCraney directs. Designer is Tom Piper, lighting designer Stephen Strawbridge, composer Michael Thurber and movement director Gelan Lambert.
Antony and Cleopatra plays in the Swan Theatre, Stratford from Thursday (7 November) until Saturday 30 November. In early 2014 it moves to Miami's Colony Theatre and the Public Theater, New York.