Kneehigh Theatre and the R.S.C. team up to present Cymbeline
The Lyric continues its relationship with Kneehigh Theatre following Nights at the Circus, The Bacchae and The Red Shoes with their latest production of Shakespeare’s most anarchic play Cymbeline.
This is Kneehigh’s first interpretation of Shakespeare and has been approached with their usual unconventionality. Working with regular collaborator Carl Grose, Artistic Director Emma Rice produces a new, freely adapted text from the original.
Cymbeline is a King with an only daughter, Imogen, who has married against his wishes the brave but impoverished Posthumus, who has been banished from court as a result. Cymbeline’s second wife is simply wicked, as is her son Cloten who wishes that he had married Imogen, and to complicate things further Cymbeline had two sons who were kidnapped at birth.
Invasions, misunderstandings, intimacies and betrayals follow, and even a visit from a god, Jupiter provides magic and delight, wit and passion. The company’s trademark vivid, physical style of story telling creates a wild, giddy and elemental show that marries comedy to tragedy with poetry and electrifying live music.
In the ensemble company, writer Carl Grose will perform in a cast that includes Hayley Carmichael (of Told By An Idiot), Róbert Lučkay (The Bacchae and Pericles at Shakespeare’s Globe), Amanda Lawrence (Nights at the Circus at the Lyric Hammersmith) and several Kneehigh regulars such as Mike Shepherd and Craig Johnson (Tristan & Yseult), sharing the creation of live music with the four dedicated musicians under Musical Director Stu Barker.
January 9, 2007
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