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Globe Theatre
on Tour
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Thu 23 and Fri 24 May 2013, 6.00pm
Fri 25 and Sat 26 May 2013,
1.00pm and 6.00pm
St Nicholas Rest Garden
Brighton Festival programmes are supported by WSL (Brighton) Ltd
Please ensure that all mobile phones are switched off
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King Lear
Edmund/King of France/Oswald
Oliver Boot
Cordelia/Fool
Bethan Cullinane
Goneril/Curan
Ruth Everett
King Lear
Joseph Marcell
Duke of Gloucester/Duke of Albany/Doctor
Rawiri Paratene
Regan
Shanaya Rafaat
Edgar/Duke of Cornwall/Duke of Burgundy
Matthew Romain
Earl of Kent
Dickon Tyrrell
Director
Bill Buckhurst
Designer
Jonathan Fensom
Composer/Musical director
Alex Silverman
Choreographer
Georgina Lamb
Fight director
Kevin McCurdy
Globe associate — text
Giles Block
Globe associate — movement
Glynn MacDonald
Voice and dialect
Martin McKellan
Assistant director
Kirsty Patrick Ward
Associate text
Ng Choon Ping
Assistant text
Emily Jenkins
Associate producer
Tamsin Palmer
Production manager
David McEvoy
Tour stage manager
Nicola Candlish
Tour stage manager
Danyal Shafiq
Costume supervisor
Laura Rushton
Tour wardrobe manager
Jessica Hughes
Marketing and press (tours)
Helena Miscioscia
Stage and transport
Paul Liengaard
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Shakespeare’s Globe
Artistic director
Dominic Dromgoole
Executive producer
Tom Bird
Theatre general managers
Lotte Buchan, Claire Godden
Theatre finance manager
Helen Hillman
Director of music
Bill Barclay
Production manager
Paul Russell
Company manager
Marion Marrs
Technical manager
Wills
Casting director
Matilda James
Film and digital distribution manager
Chui-yee Cheung
Assistant production manager
Fay Powell-Thomas
Casting, creative and filming associate
Karishma Balani
Artistic coordinator and
assistant to the artistic director
Jessica Lusk
Assistant company manager
Rebecca Austin
Theatre finance assistant
Katherine Ellis
Theatre assistant
Sarah Murray
Music assistant
James Maloney
Associate film producer
Abi Carter
Theatre intern
Melanie Bafitis
Wardrobe manager
Megan Cassidy
Wigs, hair and make-up manager
Pam Humpage
Tiring house manager
Tim de Vos
Props coordinator
Bella Lagnado
Wardrobe deputy
Michelle Jones
Deputy tiring house manager
Charles Ash
Wardrobe assistant
Emma Seychell
Wigs, hair and make-up assistants
Hayley Thompson, Victoria Young
Prop makers
Emily Hussey, Penny Spedding
Costume makers
Jane Gonin, Anna Harper,
Alison Kirkpatrick, Aislinn Luton,
Hilary Sleiman, Juliana Yeo
Milliner
Karen Shannon
Carpenters
Kes Hayter, Simeon Tachev
Researchers
Kim Gilchrist, Lana Harper,
Sophie Harrold, Faye Merralls,
Elizabeth O’Connor
Production photographs
Ellie Kurttz
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Synopsis
Lear abdicates
Lear, King of Britain, has decided to retire. In an attempt to avoid future strife,
he divides his kingdom between his three daughters. His elder two, Regan
(wife of Cornwall) and Goneril (wife of Albany), respond to his request for a
show of love, but Cordelia is unable to, not wanting to be hypocritical. In a fit
of rage, Lear banishes her, and she leaves to marry the King of France. When
his advisor Kent attempts to tell Lear he is doing wrong, he too is banished.
Gloucester is deceived
The Earl of Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund is planning to gain his brother
Edgar’s lands by disinheriting him. He convinces Gloucester that Edgar is
plotting against him, and then persuades his brother to flee from his father’s
anger. To avoid arrest, Edgar disguises himself as Poor Tom, a mad beggar.
Edmund is taken into Cornwall’s service.
Lear quarrels with his daughters
Lear begins a series of visits to Goneril and Regan, followed by a disguised
and loyal Kent. Kent insults Goneril’s steward Oswald, and Lear takes him into
his service. Goneril then quarrels with Lear, who leaves her castle to go to
Regan’s. Kent is sent ahead, but he quarrels again with Oswald, and is put in
the stocks by Regan, who supports her sister. The sisters meet together with
Lear, and tell him to dismiss some and then all of his followers. He leaves the
castle in a rage, going out into a violent storm accompanied only by his Fool
and Kent. Lear harangues the storm, then meets Poor Tom, whom he treats as
a counsellor.
Edmund’s betrayal
Gloucester tells Edmund of his intention to help Lear, and advises Kent to take
Lear to Dover, where Cordelia and a French army are to be found. But
Edmund has informed on Gloucester to Cornwall, and when Gloucester
returns to the castle he is accused of being a traitor, his eyes are put out, and
he is thrown out into the wilderness. In the mêlée, Cornwall is killed by a
servant. Edgar encounters his blind father, and, as Poor Tom, journeys with
him to Dover, where Gloucester finds Lear.
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Lear and Cordelia are reconciled
There is growing animosity between Albany and Goneril, who is showing
increasing affection to Edmund, who also has a liaison with Regan. Oswald,
taking a letter from Goneril to Edmund, encounters Gloucester, but before he
can harm him he is killed by Edgar. Lear is found by Cordelia’s army, and
they are reconciled, but they are then taken prisoner by Edmund’s soldiers,
and Edmund orders them both to be killed.
The promised end
After the battle, Goneril and Regan both encounter Edmund and display their
feelings for him. Albany challenges Edmund, and a disguised Edgar appears
to fight him. Regan dies, poisoned by Goneril, and Goneril takes her own life
when her husband hears of her betrayal. Edmund is fatally wounded, and
Edgar reveals himself. An order is sent to cancel Lear and Cordelia’s
execution, but it arrives too late to save Cordelia. Lear carries her in, and
soon after dies of a broken heart. Albany abdicates, leaving Kent and Edgar
to rule the realm; but Kent announces that he has a journey to go on like his
master. Edgar reflects on the future.
Adapted from Shakespeare’s Words by David Crystal and Ben Crystal
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Early performance and
publication
King Lear was first performed by Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men,
probably at the Globe. The only reference to an exact date of an early
performance of the play appears on the title-page of the first published
version, which advertises it ‘as it was played before the King’s Majestie at
Whitehall upon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes’. That is, Boxing
Day 1606, in either the Hall or, more likely, the Great Chamber at Whitehall
Palace.
The play was first published in 1608 and reprinted with a few minor changes
in 1619 and again, with some radical alterations, in the First Folio of 1623
(seven years after Shakespeare’s death). These changes were probably made
by the playwright in response to the appearance of the play on the stage and
suggestions made by members of the company.
An early 17th-century woodcut of Tom O'Bedlam
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Some sources of King Lear
The story of King Lear had been told many times before Shakespeare wrote
his play. His main source was the anonymous King Leir, a moderately
successful play that was presented about 12 years before the first appearance
of Shakespeare’s tragedy, though Shakespeare does not follow this work very
closely. The story of Gloucester was derived from The Countess of Pembroke’s
Arcadia (or ‘Old’ Arcadia), a prose romance by Sir Philip Sidney.
The first two acts in particular also show that Shakespeare had been reading
the Essays of Montaigne, perhaps in the translation by John Florio published in
1603. The collection includes one essay entitled ‘Of the Affection of Fathers
to their Children’. More obvious is Shakespeare’s debt to Samuel Harsnett’s
Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures. He drew on the idiosyncratic
language in Harsnett’s anti-Catholic polemic when he came to write some of
the ‘mad’ speeches of Edgar in his guise as Mad Tom.
But as Stanley Wells writes in his introduction to the Oxford Shakespeare
edition of the play: ‘Though Shakespeare certainly drew on many existing
literary, dramatic, and historical writings in composing King Lear — and also,
no doubt, though less definably, on personal experience — it seems likely that
these fed his imagination over many years rather than that he, as it were, sat
down with the open-minded intention of basing a play on a particular, existing
work and then looked round for material he might use to reshape and modify
it to suit his purpose’.
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Dividing the kingdom
When this Leir therefore was come to great years, and began to wax
unwieldy through age, he thought to understand the affections of his daughters
towards him, and prefer her whom he best loved, to the succession over the
kingdom.
Lear’s deprivations
But the greatest grief that Leir took, was to see the unkindness of his daughters,
which seemed to think that all was too much which their father had, the same
being never so little: insomuch that going from the one to the other, he was
brought to that misery, that scarcely they would allow him one servant to wait
upon him.
Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587)
Sir Brian Annesley
We repaired unto the house of Brian Annesley, of Lee, in the county of Kent,
and finding him fallen into such imperfection and temperature of mind and
memory, as we thought him thereby become altogether unfit to govern himself
or his estate, we endeavoured to take a perfect inventory of such goods and
chattels as he possessed in and about his house. But Mrs Cordall, his
daughter… refuseth to suffer any inventory to be taken…
Letter from Sir John Wildgoose and others to Lord Cecil, 18 October 1603
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Everywhere and Nowhere
The title-page of the first edition of King Lear, the quarto printed in 1608,
appears to advertise an emphatically metropolitan play. At the top, in the
largest lettering the typesetter could choose without requiring two lines, it
bears the name of the most prestigious playwright then working in London:
‘M. William Shak-speare’. It goes on to associate the play not only with
two key venues in the capital but with the best-patronized company in the
city, boasting that Lear has been performed ‘before the Kings Majestie at
Whitehall’ (on 26 December 1606) by ‘his Majesties servants playing
usually at the Gloabe on the Bancke-side’. Even the small print at the foot of
the page declares this to be a London-based play, proclaiming that copies
of King Lear can be bought wholesale from Nathaniel Butter ‘at his shop in
Pauls Church-yard at the sign of the Pide Bull neere St Austins Gate’.
A high tragedy about a catastrophic succession crisis in the British state,
composed by a member of the royal theatre company and soon played
before the King himself at his principal London residence — what could
belong more to the capital than King Lear? Furthermore, we even know
where Shakespeare was living at about the time he wrote this play, and it
was not Warwickshire. Thanks to the testimony he later provided in a legal
dispute over a dowry promised by his landlord, we know that in 1605–6
he was staying among a family of French expatriate hairdressers, the
Mountjoys, in Silver Street, near the Barbican.
But then again Shakespeare did not buy his lodging on Silver Street but
only rented it, remaining a long-distance commuter: his deposition in the
Mountjoy lawsuit, instead of declaring himself a settled Londoner, begins
with the words ‘I, William Shakespeare, gent[leman], of Stratford-uponAvon, in the county of Warwickshire’. And if the author of King Lear
remained a periodic traveller between the nation’s hub and the provinces,
then this play’s characters are even more so, centrifugally dispersed from the
end of the first scene onwards. Unlike Cymbeline, the other play
Shakespeare wrote about ancient Britain after the accession of the Scottish
king James VI and I had made drama about merely English history look
passé, King Lear never even mentions London.
After Lear has divided his kingdom in Act I scene 1 — during which two
major characters, Cordelia and Kent, are banished from it for good
measure — it is no longer obvious where the centre of power is, and we
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characteristically meet people in transit across tracts of open countryside.
The downwardly mobile king and the upwardly mobile Edmund alike soon
find themselves wandering between the respective headquarters of
Gloucester, Goneril and Regan, and the play never specifies where these
are: the only things that are clear are that we are never anywhere urban
and that the weather is everywhere dire. It is true that, once rumours begin
to get about that Cordelia and her husband’s French army are planning an
invasion with the intention of restoring Lear to his throne, the old king’s allies
begin to gravitate towards Dover, but nobody ever actually gets there. The
play’s one-minute, virtuoso description of a definite location — the account
Edgar gives to his blind father Gloucester of the view from the top of Dover
Cliff — turns out to be part of a therapeutic lie, designed to convince the
unfortunate earl that he has miraculously survived a suicide attempt and
should be more stoical in future.
What makes King Lear even less like the squarely London-orientated affair
its title-page might lead us to expect, though, is its profound interest in
vagrancy. Shakespeare’s version of the tale of King Lear, a story well known
to Jacobeans from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, from Edmund Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene, from the older play The True Chronicle History of King
Leir and from a number of other renditions, is the only one in which Lear
and Cordelia lose the battle, the only one in which the king goes mad, and
the only one in which the king’s moral trajectory through the action hinges
on an encounter with what appears to be a crazed rural beggar (Edgar in
his disguise as Poor Tom). For Shakespeare, half the point of King Lear is
the salutary, edifying experience undergone by its titular king of becoming
a deranged, homeless, lost vagrant himself, and the fact that this marks a
major change from all previous received versions of the story leads its
audience to be substantially lost too. Is this the promised end? Every
resolution and scrap of certainty the story appears to promise is
systematically denied us.
A literally levelling play that never calls for the use of an upper area of the
stage — in the universe of King Lear there appear to be no gods, no
heavens, no hell, just a disenchanted flat, exposed plain on which human
beings struggle and die — Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy similarly refuses
to privilege any single, special location. Since power is innately fraudulent,
there is no real capital. At the very core of the play, out shelterless in the
rain, Lear expresses this new, egalitarian moral vision in a prayer: ‘Poor
naked wretches, whereso’er you are, / That bide the pelting of this pitiless
night… ’ Whereso’er you are: this play aspires to speak of, and to,
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everyone, everywhere. It is only appropriate, then, that among its earliest
recorded productions, soon after that monitory performance for King James,
was a rendition given illegally by a small company of former artisans who
toured the moorland hamlets of the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire in
1609–10. Known as ‘Sir Richard Cholmeley’s Players’, this troupe appears to
have obtained copies of the quartos of both King Lear and Pericles not
directly from London but through a bookseller in York, and much more
controversially its repertory also included a banned Catholic play about the
miracles of St Christopher. (The troupe was reported to the authorities by the
Puritan landowner Sir Posthumus Hoby after it performed at the manor of Sir
John and Lady Julyan Yorke in Gowthwaite, Nidderdale, at Candlemas
1610). So King Lear may have begun life in London as a sermon addressed
to those at the centre, but it was soon taken up by the excluded and the
seditious on the margins. Long may it tour.
© Michael Dobson
Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute and Professor of Shakespeare at the
University of Birmingham
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An ordinary old man: drawing by Rembrandt
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Objects of Fear and Charity
The mainspring of Shakespeare’s great tragedy is Lear’s abdication, but this
is also a play about eviction. In our modern euphemism we talk about
putting an elderly relative ‘in a home’, which generally means that we are
putting them out of a home. In Lear’s case, of course, there is an element of
stubborn choice in his determination to ‘abjure all roofs’ rather than live in
the reduced circumstances demanded by his daughters. Pursuing that
choice at the ‘very verge’ of his natural life, he exposes himself to the most
extreme conditions of homelessness and vagrancy suffered by those he has
ruled over for so many years. At the margin of his own life, Lear travels to
the furthest margin of the social order.
King Lear perhaps has a more obvious social dimension than any other of
the major tragedies, reflecting specific historical conditions. In a tightly
structured and intensely hierarchical society the problem of vagrancy was
highly visible, and it was one that had been growing throughout the 16th
century. Changes in land law had made it easier for small landholders to
be evicted from their property; the dissolution of the monasteries had made
many workers employed there redundant; and throughout the period
discharged soldiers added to the number of people living outside the
established social order. A vagabond counter-culture emerged with its own
ranks, trade descriptions, etiquette and argot. This was revealed in
alarming detail in the 1560s by John Awdely and Thomas Harman in
books that mix investigative journalism with red-top sensationalism. In
Harman’s Caveat for Common Cursitors (1567) the individuals were even
listed by name and included ‘John Donne (with one leg)’.
This might seem topical and ephemeral, but these works were surprisingly
long lived. Harman’s book was reissued in 1592 and Awdely’s Fraternity of
Vagabonds in 1603, two years before the probable composition of King
Lear. Awdely’s title, though it is intended to allude to a criminal network,
would serve equally well for the motley group who shelter in the hovel in
Act III of King Lear.
Since homelessness and vagrancy produced an underworld of rogues, they
were conditions that excited fear; but Elizabethans were also aware of their
Christian duties of charity towards the poor and helpless, and a
rudimentary welfare system existed, based on the parish. Within the
confines of the parish you would to some degree be looked after; outside
it, you were on your own. These twin reactions to the problem of vagrancy
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— charity and fear — are reflected in the two kinds of legislation aimed at
dealing with it. Poor laws and laws for the punishment of the undeserving
poor, the so-called ‘sturdy beggars’, date back to the early Tudor period
and they continued to be passed up to the time of Shakespeare’s play and
beyond. Two acts passed in successive years at the end of Elizabeth’s reign
sum up the situation: 1597 saw a new Act for the Punishment of Rogues,
Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars, but in the following year another Act for
the Relief of the Poor also went on to the statute book.
Bridewell and Bedlam, the two most notorious institutions designed to deal
with the socially marginal, also reflected this double motivation of charity
and fear. Though Bridewell came to be associated with the whipping of
prostitutes, it had originally been granted to the City of London as a refuge
for the poor and dispossessed. The Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, had
written to Sir William Cecil in 1553 with the suggestion that the palace (as
it then was) might be used in this way: ‘I must be suitor unto you in our
good Master Christ’s cause; I beseech you be good to him. He hath lain
too long abroad (as you do know) without lodging in the streets of London,
both hungry, and naked and cold’. The words of Ridley’s appeal in Christ’s
name on behalf of the poor has resonance in King Lear. But so too does
Bridewell’s translation from palace to workhouse and place of correction.
The other institution with a terrifying reputation was Bedlam, as the
Bethlehem Hospital came to be known. Founded in 1274, this was one of
the first two hospitals for the mentally ill in Europe (the other was in Spain),
but in Shakespeare’s time the term ‘hospital’ was a grotesque misnomer. The
inmates were regularly whipped and paying visitors came for entertainment,
laughing at the behaviour of the deranged and even joining in with the
flagellation. Shakespeare would certainly have been familiar with Bedlam,
since when he was living in Bishopsgate it was just round the corner.
Those who managed to get out could provoke some pity, and former
inmates might make a living by wandering round the country and begging.
Others, who had never been inside, saw this as a lucrative opportunity and
pretended to be former Bedlam inmates to ply their trade. They were called
‘Abraham men’, which may be an allusion to the Abraham ward of
Bedlam. Awdely explains that ‘An Abraham man is he that walketh barearmed, and bare-legged, and feigneth himself mad, and carrieth a piece of
wool, or a stick with bacon on it, or suchlike toy, and nameth himself Poor
Tom’. Harman adds that these characters sometimes play the fool, or dance
and sing. This is the origin of Edgar’s disguise in King Lear.
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Edgar’s role in the play was certainly memorable, and the title-page of the
First Quarto of King Lear (1608) tells the reader that as well as ‘the life and
death of king LEAR and his three Daughters’ the book contains ‘the
vnfortunate life of Edgar… and his sullen and assumed humor of TOM of
Bedlam’. The billing is appropriate because it underlines how central the
themes of homelessness and vagrancy are to the play. Ultimately, they are
connected to the search for truth: as the Fool bitterly remarks, ‘Truth’s a dog
must to kennel; he must be whipped out when the Lady’s Brach may stand
by th’ fire and stink’.
© Neil Rhodes
Neil Rhodes is Professor of English Literature and Cultural History at the University of
St Andrews and Visiting Professor at the University of Granada
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Biographies
Giles Block Globe associate – text
Giles Block was formerly Associate Director at Ipswich Theatre (1974–7), a staff director at the
Royal National Theatre (1977–81) and Director of Platforms at the Royal National Theatre
(1981–4). He has led the text work at Shakespeare’s Globe since 1999 and has been
involved in almost 60 productions for the company. His directing credits include Antony and
Cleopatra (1999), Hamlet (2000) and Troilus and Cressida (2005) for Shakespeare’s Globe;
The Fawn and She Stoops to Conquer for the Royal National Theatre; Macbeth, The Cherry
Orchard, King Lear, Richard III, Hamlet, Skylight and Vincent in Brixton for the Shochiku
Company, Japan; and The Tempest, Henry V and The Comedy of Errors at the Blackfriars
Theatre, Virginia. In 2000 the Association of Major Theatres of Japan recognized him for
services to Japanese theatre.
Oliver Boot Edmund, King of France, Oswald
Oliver Boot trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His previous credits for
Shakespeare’s Globe include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon of Athens, Antony and
Cleopatra and In Extremis. Elsewhere his theatre credits include Piaf and Finding Neverland at
the Curve Theatre, Leicester; Bedroom Farce on tour; The Lady From the Sea at the Birmingham
Repertory Theatre; Jamaica Inn at the Salisbury Playhouse; Othello for Cheek by Jowl on an
international tour; The Three Musketeers and Tartuffe at the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke;
Hay Fever for the Oxford Stage Company; The Three Musketeers at the Theatre Royal, York;
scenes from Henry V at St James’s Palace; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Milton
Rooms, Malton. His films include John Carter of Mars, Blooded and Waterloo Bridge, and his
television credits include Great Night Out, Time of Your Life, One Night, My Family, Garrow’s
Law, Holby City, Hotel Babylon, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and As If.
Bill Buckhurst director
Bill Buckhurst’s previous credits for Shakespeare’s Globe include Hamlet on tour, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and Macbeth; and Romeo and Juliet as part of the ‘Playing Shakespeare with
Deutsche Bank’ tour of the United Arab Emirates. His other directing credits include Barbarians
and Tinderbox at the Tooting Arts Club; Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer
Night’s Dream for Stafford Festival Shakespeare; Riff Raff for Arcola Theatre; The Vegemite Tales
in the West End and at the Riverside Studios; Normal at the Union Theatre, London; Penetrator
and The Night Before Christmas for Theatre503; and, as assistant director, Get Santa! and
Aunt Dan and Lemon at the Royal Court. His acting engagements include seasons with the RSC,
Propeller and the Oxford Stage Company; at the Royal Court and Shakespeare’s Globe; and in
Chichester and Northampton. His film and television credits include Skyfall, World War Z, New
Tricks, Spooks, Collision, Murphy’s Law, EastEnders, Coronation Street, Holby City, Bad Girls
and As If.
Bethan Cullinane Cordelia, Fool
Bethan Cullinane trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her stage appearances include
Ladybird for Secret/Heart at the New Diorama Theatre, London; The Rest is Silence for
DreamThinkSpeak; The Secret Love Life of Ophelia at the Bloomsbury Festival; and Climate
Week for Arcola Theatre. Her films include Alpha: Omega for Gobby and Specs Productions
Ltd., supported by Pinewood Studios; Thyme; and Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s Murder in Three Acts for the
Frieze Foundation. Her radio credits include Stevenson in Love for BBC Radio 4.
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Ruth Everett Goneril, Curan
Ruth Everett trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her theatre engagements include
Dangerous Corner at the Salisbury Playhouse; Antony and Cleopatra at the Chichester Festival
Theatre; Six Actors in Search of a Director at the Charing Cross Theatre; The Marriage of
Figaro and Our Country’s Good at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury; Chekhov in Hell at the
Soho Theatre and the Drum Theatre, Plymouth; Things That Make No Sense for Theatre Uncut;
Tiger Country at the Hampstead Theatre; Rain Man on tour; The Spiral for the Royal Court
Rough Cuts; Suppressed Desires and Chains of Dew at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond;
Pains of Youth at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry; Rabbit at the Brits Off Broadway festival,
New York, and at Trafalgar Studios; Much Ado About Nothing at the Liverpool Playhouse;
Outlying Islands at the Ustinov Studio Theatre, Bath; and Great Expectations for the RSC and
Cheek by Jowl. Her films include Human, and her television credits include The Bill, Holby City
and Sherlock.
Jonathan Fensom designer
Jonathan Fensom’s previous credits for Shakespeare’s Globe include Henry V, Hamlet, The Globe
Mysteries, Hamlet on tour, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, King Lear and Love’s Labour’s Lost. His other
stage credits include The Accrington Pals at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester; Our Boys,
Rain Man, Some Girls, Twelfth Night, Smaller, What the Butler Saw and East in the West End;
Journey’s End in the West End and on Broadway; Six Degrees of Separation and National
Anthems at the Old Vic; Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin; Swan Lake for
the San Francisco Ballet; The Homecoming, Big White Fog and Becky Shaw at the Almeida;
Happy Now?, The Mentalists, Burn/Citizenship/Chatroom for the Royal National Theatre; Duck,
Talking to Terrorists and The Sugar Syndrome at the Royal Court; Kindertransport and Breakfast with
Emma for Shared Experience; The Faith Healer at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, and on Broadway;
God of Hell at the Donmar Warehouse; Small Family Business and Little Shop of Horrors at the
West Yorkshire Playhouse; and Wozzeck for the Birmingham Opera Company. He was associate
designer on The Lion King on Broadway. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Journey’s End.
Emily Jenkins assistant text
Emily Jenkins’s theatre directing credits include Rainbow at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which
won a Fringe First Award last year; Holiday at the Bush Theatre, London; Cab Fare for the
Common Man at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; Mojo Mickybo at the Old Red Lion, London;
Arabian Nights at the Liverpool Theatre School; Look at Me for Theatre503; and Overspill at
the Cockpit Theatre, London. Her credits as assistant director include La bohème for the Royal
Opera, for which she was awarded the Staff Directors’ Observership; Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
at the Theatre Royal, Bath; Cocteau in the Underworld for Arcola Theatre; Anyone Can Whistle
at the Jermyn Street Theatre; and The Glass Menagerie, for which she was also the assistant
dramaturg, at the Young Vic. She is a resident director of the Poel Event at the Royal National
Theatre and is on a year-long writer’s attachment at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
Georgina Lamb choreographer
Georgina Lamb’s credits include Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Doctor Faustus and The Frontline for Shakespeare’s Globe; Cinderella: The Midnight Princess and
The Three Musketeers at the Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames; Much Ado About Nothing in the
West End; Electra and Dream Story at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill; A Game of Love and Chance
at the Salisbury Playhouse; Macbeth at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre; Romeo and Juliet for the
RSC; A Christmas Carol at the Chichester Festival Theatre; Macbeth at the Chichester Festival Theatre,
in the West End, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and on Broadway; Six Characters in Search of
an Author for Headlong at the Chichester Festival Theatre and in the West End; and The White
Devil at the Menier Chocolate Factory. She was nominated for BAFTAs for her work on True Stories
and Hansel and Gretel for the BBC. She has directed productions at the Soho Theatre, the Lyric
Hammersmith Studio, the Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, Highgate, the Battersea Arts Centre and the
Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, and for Frantic Assembly. She has performed in productions by the
Royal National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland, Frantic Assembly and the Royal Opera.
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Glynn MacDonald Globe associate – movement
Glynn MacDonald is past Chairman of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique. She
has worked in the Actors Centre and the Field Day Theatre Company in Ireland, Dramaten in
Stockholm, Norskspillersforbund in Norway, Holback Engstheatre in Denmark, and the Bremen
Staatsoper in Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Japan, Australia and the USA. Since 1997 she
has been Director of Movement at Shakespeare’s Globe, working on all its productions. In
2002 she directed Transforming September 11th for Peace Direct at the Royal Opera House’s
Linbury Studio. She shared the Sam Wanamaker Award with Giles Block in 2011 for services
to Shakespeare’s Globe. She also works on the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the
Royal Opera House.
Kevin McCurdy fight director
Kevin McCurdy trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he has been
the fight master since 2005. His extensive stage credits include Hamlet, Macbeth, Bedlam,
Helen, Troilus and Cressida, As You Like It and the world premiere of The Frontline at
Shakespeare’s Globe; Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Comedy of
Errors, The Tempest, Marat Sade and The Nativity for the RSC; Broken Glass at the Tricycle
Theatre, London, and in the West End; Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic; Treasure Island at the
Bristol Old Vic; Been So Long at the Young Vic; and The Heretic at the Royal Court. His opera
credits include Die Fledermaus, Rigoletto, Wozzeck, Il trovatore and Tristan und Isolde for Welsh
National Opera; and The Cunning Little Vixen at Glyndebourne. His film and television credits
include John Carter of Mars, Season of the Witch, Doctor Who Christmas Special, Torchwood,
The Story of Tracy Beaker and Carrie’s War.
Martin McKellan voice and dialect coach
Martin McKellan’s previous credits for Shakespeare’s Globe include The Taming of the Shrew,
Henry V, The God of Soho, Hamlet, As You Like It, Doctor Faustus, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream and Anne Boleyn. His recent credits elsewhere include The Accrington Pals at the Royal
Exchange Theatre, Manchester; the 40th anniversary tour of The Rocky Horror Show; Dandy
Dick at the Theatre Royal, Brighton; Life is for Beginners and This Much is True for Theatre503;
On the Record for Arcola Theatre; The Madness of King George in the West End and on tour;
Our Private Life at the Royal Court; Hobson’s Choice, Sisters and Alice at the Crucible Theatre,
Sheffield; The History Boys at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and on tour; When We Are
Married in the West End; Enjoy in the West End and on tour; The Lord of the Rings in the West
End; and national tours of Single Spies, Our House and The Importance of Being Earnest.
Joseph Marcell King Lear
Joseph Marcell’s previous appearances with Shakespeare’s Globe include Much Ado About
Nothing, Coriolanus and Under the Black Flag. His other theatre engagements include A Free
Man of Colour at the Lincoln Center, New York; Gem of the Ocean at the Tricycle Theatre,
London, and for Arena Stage in the USA; Othello at the Lyric Hammersmith and the Arts
Theatre, London; Breakfast With Mugabe at the Ustinov Studio Theatre, Bath; Radio Golf, Let
There Be Love, Walk Hard Talk Loud, King Hedley II, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone at the
Tricycle Theatre; Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke; Master Harold and the Boys
and Peer Gynt for the Royal National Theatre; Sherlock Holmes on Broadway; and Romeo and
Juliet for Shakespeare & Co. USA. His films include Cry Freedom, Sioux City, A Beautiful Life,
We Three and Playing Away. His television credits include The Bold and the Beautiful, Jericho,
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Brothers and Sisters, Madmen and Specialists, EastEnders, End of
the Line, Empire Road, In the House, Frost and Living Single.
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Rawiri Paratene Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Albany, Doctor
Rawiri Paratene trained at the Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, Wellington, and
Mercury Theatre. His credits for Shakespeare’s Globe include Romeo and Juliet, Helen and
Troilus and Cressida. Elsewhere, his engagements include King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The
Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Henry V, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The
Wizard of Oz, Kiss Me Kate, Cabaret, Equus, Purapurawhetu and The Club in New Zealand.
His films include Whale Rider, The Insatiable Moon and What Becomes of the Broken
Hearted?. His television credits include Xena: Warrior Princess, Playschool and Shortland Street.
Kirsty Patrick Ward assistant director
Kirsty Patrick Ward’s stage directing credits include People Like Us at the Pleasance Theatre,
Edinburgh; Snow White for an Old Vic educational tour; Chavs at the Lyric Hammersmith and
the Latitude Festival; Present Tense for Live Theatre; Life Support at the Theatre Royal, York;
The Baron for Old Vic New Voices; Brave New Worlds at the Soho Theatre; and The 24 Hour
Plays: Old Vic New Voices 2011. As an associate director, her credits include Symphony for
Watch This Space, the Royal National Theatre and the Lyric Hammersmith at the Latitude
Festival; and Young Pretender for Hull Truck at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Palace
Theatre, Watford. Her assistant-directing credits include Our New Girl at the Bush Theatre,
London; Bunny at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a Fringe First Award; and The Boy
on the Swing for Arcola Theatre. This year she is a finalist in the J.P. Morgan Emerging Director
Awards; last year she was a finalist in the JMK Awards. She is Artistic Director of Waifs + Strays
and an associate director of the theatre company nabokov.
Ng Choon Ping associate text
Ng Choon Ping’s directing credits include Pure O and Admissions at the King’s Head, London;
Yolk and Matchmakers at the RADA Studios; Snap at the Young Vic; Guiltless at the Southwark
Playhouse; Happy Ever After and Teeth for Theatre503; Armed Forces Day at the Riverside
Studios; and, as assistant director, Chimerica at the Almeida and Someone to Blame at the
King’s Head.
Shanaya Rafaat Regan
Shanaya Rafaat trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her theatre enagagements
include Twelfth Night and The Malcontent for Custom/Practice; The Illusion for Secret/Heart at
the Southwark Playhouse; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Dash Arts and the RSC at the
Roundhouse and on tour. Her film credits include Complicit and Honeycomb Lodge; her
television credits include Silk for BBC Television.
Matthew Romain Edgar, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Burgundy
Matthew Romain trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His stage appearances include
Hamlet for Shakespeare’s Globe; The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar Warehouse; Privates on
Parade, See How They Run, Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ and My Fair Lady at the Pitlochry Festival
Theatre; Onassis at the Derby Theatre and the Novello Theatre, West End; and The Shape of
Things at the Arts Theatre, London.
BF018_2013LearH:BF1 / LSO artwork 12/05/2013 19:17 Page 22
Alex Silverman composer, music director
Alex Silverman composed the scores for the Shakespeare’s Globe productions of The God of
Soho, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado
About Nothing. His other stage credits include Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon and
Aristophanes’ Frogs at the Cambridge Arts Theatre; Unfinished Dream for LIFT; The Hound of the
Baskervilles for Peepolykus; Angus, Thongs and Even More Snogging at the West Yorkshire
Playhouse; The Snow Queen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston upon Thames; The Coronation of
Poppea at the Little Opera House, London; Hamlet! The Musical at the Royal & Derngate
Theatre, Northampton, and Richmond Theatre; Faith Healer at the Bristol Old Vic; After Troy at
the Oxford Playhouse; The Stefan Golaszewski Plays at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the
Bush Theatre, London; Othello at the Salisbury Playhouse; Richard III at the Southwark
Playhouse; and Pete and Dud: Come Again in the West End and on tour. He has written music
for 16 productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where his work has twice been nominated
for Total Theatre Awards; he has also fulfilled commissions for BBC Radio, Channel 4, ITV1
and SkyArts.
Dickon Tyrell Earl of Kent
Dickon Tyrell trained at the National Youth Theatre and the Royal Welsh College of Music and
Drama. His stage appearances include Romeo and Juliet in the United Arab Emirates, Hamlet in
the USA and Mexico, Othello, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn for Shakespeare’s Globe; Rutherford
and Son for Northern Stage; Animal Farm at the Derby Playhouse; The Romans in Britain at the
Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; Harvest at the Royal Court and on tour; The Merchant of Venice on
tour in the UK, Japan, Malaysia, the USA and China; Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Richard II,
Richard III, Julius Caesar and The Devil is an Ass for the RSC; Major Barbara for the Peter Hall
Company; Romeo and Juliet, Dracula and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Northern
Broadsides; Ninagawa’s Peer Gynt at the Barbican and in Manchester, Norway and Japan;
Much Ado About Nothing in the West End; The Plough and the Stars at the West Yorkshire
Playhouse; and Seven Doors at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. His recent television credits
include Law & Order: UK and The Trial of Tony Blair. His radio credits include Antony and
Cleopatra and Major Barbara for BBC Radio 3.
Tweet us a rapid review for your chance to win Festival tickets.
Simply @brightfest for us to see your review. If we like it we’ll retweet it.
Can you get it all in one tweet? Here’s the challenge. You can even throw in
a hashtag for good measure – #BF2013
If your review is retweeted by @brightfest you will win a pair of tickets.
Happy tweeting!
brightfest
BF018_2013LearH:BF1 / LSO artwork 12/05/2013 19:17 Page 23
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival is a registered charity that runs the year-round programme at Brighton
Dome (Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre) as well as the three-week Brighton Festival that
takes place in venues across the city.
Chair
Ms Polly Toynbee
Board of Trustees
Ms Pam Alexander, Cllr Geoffrey Bowden, Mr Donald Clark, Prof. Julian Crampton, Mr Simon Fanshawe,
Mr Nelson Fernandez, Prof. David Gann, Mr David Jordan, Mr Alan McCarthy, Cllr Mo Marsh,
Mr Dermot Scully, Ms Sue Stapely
Producing Brighton Festival each year is an enormous task involving hundreds of people. The directors would like to
thank all the staff of Brighton Dome and Festival, the staff team at our catering partners Peyton & Byrne, the staff at
all the venues, the volunteers and everyone else involved in making this great Festival happen.
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival Staff
Chief Executive Andrew Comben
PA to Chief Executive Heather Jones
Senior Producer Tanya Peters
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival Artistic Planning
Music Producer Laura Ducceschi
Theatre Producer Orla Flanagan
Programming Coordinator Martin Atkinson, Rosie Crane
Programme Manager Jody Yebga
Venue Diary Manager Lara Hockman
Brighton Festival Artistic Planning and Production
Production Manager, External Venues Ian Baird
Production Manager, Outdoor Events Polly Barker
Producing Assistant Charlotte Blandford
Associate Producer Sally Cowling
Festival Classical Producer Gill Kay
Literature and Spoken Word Producer Mathew Clayton
Artistic Planning Volunteers Maddie Smart, Martha Bloom,
Grace Brannigan, Chloe Hunter
Volunteer Coordinator Melissa Perkins
Peacock Poetry Prize Volunteer Annie Tomlinson
Learning Access and Participation
Head of Learning Access and Participation Pippa Smith
Creative Producer/26 Letters Programmer Hilary Cooke
Learning Access and Participation Manager Rebecca Fidler
Learning Access and Participation Assistant Alex Epps
Learning Access and Participation
Volunteer Coordinator Kelly Turnbull
Director of Development Barbara MacPherson
Development and Membership
Trusts and Foundations Associate Carla Pannett
Development Manager (maternity leave) Sarah Shepherd
Development Officer Ceri Eldin
Membership Officer Kelly Davies
Development Administrator Dona Crisfield
Development Communications Volunteer Patricia Nathan
Director of Finance and Deputy Chief Executive Amanda Jones
Finance
Management Accountant Jo Davis
Senior Finance Officer Lizzy Fulker
Finance Officers Lyndsey Malic, Carys Griffith, Donna Joyce
Human Resources
Human Resources Officer Kate Telfer
Administrative Assistant (HR) Emma Collier
Human Resources Volunteer Melissa Baechler
Contracts and Information Technology
Head of Management Information Systems Tim Metcalfe
Contracts Manager Gwen Avery
ICT Support Officer Paul Smith
Administrative Assistant (Contracts) Cathy Leadley
Director of Marketing Carole Britten
Marketing and Press
Press and PR Manager Nicola Jeffs
Head of Press (maternity leave) Shelley Bennet
Marketing Manager Marilena Reina
Senior Marketing Officer (maternity leave) Georgina Harris
Acting Senior Marketing Officer Carly Bennett
Marketing Officer James Barton
Freelance Marketing Officer Rasheed Rahman
Senior Press Officer Chris Challis
Design and Print Production Officer Louise Richardson
Digital and Administrative Officer Annie Whelan
Broadcast PR Anna Christoforou
Festival Photographer Victor Frankowski
Marketing Volunteers Muna Amor, Alice Garside
Design Volunteer Jason Wilkinson
PR Volunteer Elizabeth Hughes
Ticket Office
Ticket Services Manager Steve Cotton
Deputy Ticket Services Manager Steve Bennett
Ticket Services Supervisor Phil Newton
Senior Ticket Services Assistant Dom Plucknett
Ticket Services Assistants Laura Edmans, Emily Adams,
Marie-Claire De Boer, Jacqueline Hadlow, Josh Krawczyk,
Bev Parke, Florence Puddifoot, Jamie Smith, Caroline Sutcliffe
BF018_2013LearH:BF1 / LSO artwork 12/05/2013 19:17 Page 24
Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival
Director of Operations Maxine Hort
Production
Head of Production Rich Garfield
Event Production Manager Olly Olsen
Operations Production Manager Kevin Taylor
Production Coordinator Erica Dellner
Concert Hall Senior Technician Nick Pitcher, Sam Wellard
Corn Exchange Senior Technician Andy Furneaux
Studio Theatre Senior Technician Beth O’Leary
Technicians Jamie Barker, Sam Burgess, Bartosz Dylewski, Scott McQuaide, Jem Noble, Adam Vincent, Seth Wagstaff, Csaba Mach,
Mike Bignell, Al Robinson, John Saxby, Jon Anrep, Chris Tibbles, Dan Goddard, Nick Goodwin, Nick Hill, Philip Oliver,
Peter Steinbacher, Christos Takas, Youssef El-Kirate, Daniel Harvey, Marc Beatty, Rebecca Perkins, Owen Ridley, Graham Rees,
Eliot Hughes, Matt Jones, James Christie, Robert Bullock
Conference and Event Sales
Business Development Manager Donna Miller
Conference and Event Sales Manager Delphine Cassara
Marketing Assistant Helen Rouncivell
Maintenance
Maintenance
Maintenance
Maintenance
Maintenance
Manager John Rogers
Supervisor Chris Parsons
Plumber Colin Burt
Apprentice Matthew Ashby
Visitor Services
Head of Visitor Services Zoe Curtis
Visitor Services Manager Sarah Wilkinson
Event Managers Morgan Robinson, Tim Ebbs, Simon Cowan, Josh Williams
Duty Event Managers Jamie Smith, Adam Self
Visitor Services Officer Emily Cross
Senior Visitor Services Assistant Kara Boustead-Hinks
Visitor Services Assistants Peter Bann, Graham Cameron, Melissa Cox, Anja Gibbs, Valerie Furnham, David Earl, Andrea Hoban-Todd,
Tony Lee, Jules Pearce, Joe Pryor, Alex Pummell, Josh Rowley, Thomas Sloan, Adam Self, Claire Swift, Carly West, Nicky Conlan,
Matt Freeland, Matthew Mulcahy, Richard Thorp, Emily Cross
Visitor Services Volunteer Coordinator Lizzy Leach
Front of House
Front of House Manager Ralph Corke
Front of House Supervisors Bernard Brown, Kara Boustead-Hinks, Bill Clements, Gabi Hergert, John Morfett, Jeff Pearce, Betty Raggett,
Michael Raynor, Adam Self
Stewards and Security
Paul Andrews, David Azzaro, Peter Bann, Janey Beswick, Hannah Bishop, Jim Bishop, Penny Bishop, Andy Black, Sarah Bond,
Sara Bowring, Alice Bridges, Frank Brown, Andy Buchanan, Johanna Burley, Carole Chisem, Julian Clapp, John Clarke, Tricia Clements,
Joyce Colivet, NIcky Conlan, Mary Cooter, Fraser Crosbie, Darren Cross, John Davidson, Marie-Clare De Boer, Lawry Defreitas,
Paddy Delaney, Emma Dell, Kathy Dent, Judi Dettmar, Alan Diplock, Melanie Dumelo, Maureen East, Jan Eccleston, Abigail Edwards,
Daniel FlowerDay, Maria Foy, Valerie Furnham, Betty Gascoigne, Anja Gibbs, Vivien Glaskin, Matt Goorney, Debbie Greenfield,
Louise Gregory, Ellie Griffiths- Moore, Paul Gunn, Gillian Hall, Kezia Hanson, Thomas Haywood, Martin Henwood, Al Hodgson,
Mike Hollway, Peter Holmes, Frances Holt, Tony Jackson, Emily James-Farley, Mick Jessop, Julie Jones, Mark Jones, Julia Jupp,
Jim Killick, Kev Koya, Jon Lee, Emma Levick, Ady Limmer, Samatha Lucus, Vicki Lywood-Last, Carol Maddock, Ivica Manic, Tania Marsh,
Carole Moorhouse, Nick Morgan, Lisa Murray, Richard Nast, Mlinh Nguyen, Paley O’Connor, Brendan O’Meara, Lucy Paget,
Simon Pattenden, Jules Pearce, Noele Picot, Rachel Potter, Will Rathbone, Grant Richie, Jenny Ridland, Ruth Rogers, Joshua Rowley,
Eve Saunders, Rossana Schaffa, Laura Scobie, Samantha Sharman, Joe Simmons-Issler, Caroline Smith, Graham Smith, Jamie Smith,
Alex Sparham, Sheila Stockbridge, Richard Thorp, Brigitt Turner, Carly West, Geraldine White, Cicely Whitehead, Geoff Wicks,
Linda Williams.
Programmes
Editor Alison Latham | Biographies editor Oliver Tims | Design Heather Kenmure 020 7931 7639 | All articles are copyright of the author