Post by Queen Mab on Dec 17, 2010 9:45:13 GMT
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1339352/These-Shylocks-real-money-spinners.html
Patrick Stewart is returning to the Royal Shakespeare Company for his pound of flesh. The theatrical knight will star as Shylock in a new production of The Merchant Of Venice, which reunites him with award-winning Rupert Goold.
Goold directed Stewart in Macbeth, which played to acclaim in Chichester, the West End and on Broadway.
The Merchant Of Venice will be the second play on at the RSC’s refurbished flagship Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The first will be Macbeth, directed by the RSC’s artistic chief Michael Boyd with Jonathan Slinger taking the title role.
I understand that Stewart has agreed to play the Venetian money-lender but he hasn’t, as an RSC executive noted, ‘physically signed the contract’.
In any case, he’s due to begin rehearsals in late March, with performances scheduled to start on May 13.
Stewart has always been a glutton for Shakespeare and he has a fondness for Shylock, having played him twice before: in 1965 at the Bristol Old Vic and in 1978 for the RSC (but not in the main house).
He has performed a one-man show titled Shylock: Shakespeare’s Alien, where he argued the case for ‘one of the most commonly reviled characters in Shakespeare’.
Stewart recently ended a short-lived run in New York of David Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre. The actor has other stage plans for the New Year that are still being negotiated and they include a hoped for revival of The Lion In Winter, with Trevor Nunn directing.
Macbeth with Mr Slinger, who was an acclaimed Richard III, runs at Stratford from April 16, and will play in repertory with The Merchant Of Venice. Mr Slinger will also be seen in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, directed by David Farr, in the Swan Theatre in Stratford
Patrick Stewart is returning to the Royal Shakespeare Company for his pound of flesh. The theatrical knight will star as Shylock in a new production of The Merchant Of Venice, which reunites him with award-winning Rupert Goold.
Goold directed Stewart in Macbeth, which played to acclaim in Chichester, the West End and on Broadway.
The Merchant Of Venice will be the second play on at the RSC’s refurbished flagship Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. The first will be Macbeth, directed by the RSC’s artistic chief Michael Boyd with Jonathan Slinger taking the title role.
I understand that Stewart has agreed to play the Venetian money-lender but he hasn’t, as an RSC executive noted, ‘physically signed the contract’.
In any case, he’s due to begin rehearsals in late March, with performances scheduled to start on May 13.
Stewart has always been a glutton for Shakespeare and he has a fondness for Shylock, having played him twice before: in 1965 at the Bristol Old Vic and in 1978 for the RSC (but not in the main house).
He has performed a one-man show titled Shylock: Shakespeare’s Alien, where he argued the case for ‘one of the most commonly reviled characters in Shakespeare’.
Stewart recently ended a short-lived run in New York of David Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre. The actor has other stage plans for the New Year that are still being negotiated and they include a hoped for revival of The Lion In Winter, with Trevor Nunn directing.
Macbeth with Mr Slinger, who was an acclaimed Richard III, runs at Stratford from April 16, and will play in repertory with The Merchant Of Venice. Mr Slinger will also be seen in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, directed by David Farr, in the Swan Theatre in Stratford