Today, Shakespeare’s Globe announced its 2018/19 winter season which opens on 7 November. The season, which takes place in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, will feature two pairings of plays by William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Along with this call-and-response of contemporaries, the Globe will ask current artists to create new works in response to these 400-year-old provocations written by Shakespeare and Marlowe.
Opening the season will be Shakespeare’s Macbeth directed by Robert Hastie. This timely production will serve as a cautionary tale of the destruction that can be caused during the quest for power and the evil demons that can form in a tyrant’s imagination.
For a strictly limited number of performances, Ralegh: The Treason Trial will play from 15-18 November. Using verbatim accounts from source materials, this immersive production will retell the extraordinary events on that November morning in 1603. It will be set in today’s political judicial system and will premiere in Winchester Great Hall, the location of the original trial 415 years ago, before a limited run in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
On 1 December, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus will open alongside Macbeth. The classic tale which examines the very nature of human curiosity and thirst for knowledge will be directed by Paulette Randall.
At the end of the month, the first modern response will be staged as Dark Night Of The Soul: A Feminine Response To The Faustian Bargain will open on 29 December 2018. The piece will create a chorus of female voices that will ask the question: What would you sell your soul for? Jude Christian will direct an ensemble of female writers including Lily Bevan, Athena Stevens, Katie Hims, Amanda Wilkin, Lisa Hammond and Rachael Spence.
The season will continue with Marlowe’s Edward II and Shakespeare’s Richard II, examining ancestral relationships and notions of identity, sexuality, desire and power.
Edward II will open on 7 February 2019. It will see King Edward recall his lover from banishment and sets in motion a chain of events that culminate in some of the most shocking scenes in early modern theatre. Marlowe’s portrayal of Edward and Gaveston is a rare depiction of a gay relationship on the early modern stage, and a frank exploration of the tension between private pleasures and public duty.
Just weeks prior to the UK’s scheduled departure from the EU, Richard III will open on 22 February. The piece that was hugely controversial when it was first staged asks us to consider the destiny that we might be shaping for our ‘scepter’d isle’.
Continuing the Red Not Dead season this year includes Edward I by George Peele, The Little French Lawyer by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, and The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. The events which will shed new light on Shakespeare’s contemporaries and will take place over the half-term period.
On 21 March, Tom Stuart’s After Edward will open. This new daring play is a response to Marlowe’s Edward II and sees Edward II wander on to the empty stage, bloodied and confused. He has no idea where he is, or how he got here, but he does have an ominous feeling that something is wrong.
Celebrating Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank’s 14th year at the Globe, Romeo & Juliet will be opening the doors to the next generation of audience throughout March 2019.
To find out more and get tickets, head on over to the Shakespeare’s Globe site.