Meanwhile, the hapless theatre entrepreneur Henslowe (John Leary) is having problems with his investor Hugh Fennyman (Adam Murphy), who is dunning him for debts, and Lord Tilney (Francis Greenslade), the Master of Revels, who is threatening to close his theatre.

There are the rival thespians Richard Burbage (Aaron Tsindos) and Ned Alleyn (Chris Ryan), who literally go to war over Shakespeare’s script. Their clandestine affair is the lyric counterpoint to a series of comic subplots.

And so the comedy Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter transforms into the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.Ĭlaire van der Boom as Viola de Lesseps with Deidre Rubenstein. Not even Queen Elizabeth (played by a magnificent Deidre Rubenstein) can put asunder those whom God has joined. Of course, their love is doomed – Viola is to be married to the impoverished aristocrat Lord Wessex (Daniel Frederiksen) and taken to his estates in Virginia. Kent turns out to be a woman in drag, the stage-struck daughter of a rich merchant, Viola de Lesseps (Claire van der Boom).Īs Will and Viola inevitably fall in love, he finds both his muse and his Romeo. A striking young man, Thomas Kent, auditions for the part of Romeo. When we meet him, young Will (Michael Wahr) is struggling to write his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter, which is overdue and has also been sold to two rival theatres, the Rose and the Curtain. As was the case at the time, the abiding genius of the London stage is a certain Kit Marlowe (Luke Arnold), who here functions as Shakespeare’s mentor: but we all know what happened later. None of its various writers pay much heed to historical accuracy, although its jokes draw from a solid knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays and Elizabethan England, with knowing winks at the present. Shakespeare in Love is a nonsensical fan fiction with a plot that stretches past implausibility to the absurd.

Adapted by Lee Hall from the Oscar-winning romcom co-written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, it works so well on stage that you wonder why it was a film in the first place. This is the MTC’s major production for 2019, and it’s undoubtedly going to be a popular hit.

Imdb shakespeare in love