Oliver Wilson is to take the title role in Stafford Festival Shakespeare’s 2016 production Othello, which will be held in the open air at Stafford Castle.
Wilson, who trained at the East 15 Acting School, discovered his love for Shakespeare during his first professional production, Seven Ages of Poetry for the RSC. He has since featured in several popular TV series such as Cradle to Grave (BBC) as well as Hollyoaks and Misfits for Channel 4.
Madeleine Leslay plays Desdemona. She trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and her credits include Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, both at the Tobbaco Factory Theatres.
Niall Costigan (Iago) played Victor in Noel Coward’s Private Lives at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton in 2015 and was Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing at Trentham Gardens, Stoke in 2010.
Molly Gromadzki (Bianca) studied at Wolverhampton Grammar School before training at RADA. Nathan Turner (Montano) attended St John’s R C Primary School in Alton, Staffordshire while Reece Richardson (Lodovico) was born and grew up in Burton-on-Trent.
The cast also comprises T J Holmes (clown / bandleader), James Lawrence (Casio), Hester Arden (Emilia), Howard Chadwick (Brabantio), George Johnston (Roderigo), Katy Sobey (Brabantio’s maid / singer), Jamie Noar (Duke of Venice) and Thomas Wolstenholme (Gratiano).
Derrick Gask, Stafford Festival Shakespeare producer and artistic programme manager at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre, said, “we’re very pleased to welcome so many new faces to this year’s festival. This is an incredibly talented cast with members from both the local area and further afield. I anticipate this being one of our best Stafford Festival Shakespeare productions for some time.”
The play is set in Venice and Cyprus and “it leapt off the page in a very modern way for me,” said director Clare Prenton.
“I hope that by setting it in the 1950s it brings the play closer to our understanding—so that we can feel this is a real world, with real people and real domestic tragedy which echoes the destruction of Cyprus herself.”
It will be the first time that Stafford Festival Shakespeare has staged Othello which runs at Stafford Castle from Thursday 23 June until Saturday 9 July.