BOB, Gin & Tonic Productions

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“Gin & Tonic Productions embarks on its first European Tour with a brand new Shakespearean tragi-comedy: BOB - the play that Shakespeare would have written, could have written but never got round to writing. The eclectic mix of farce, cabaret and satire, live jazz and Kanye West is certain to make you slap your knee and guffaw like Elizabeth I watching traditional Shakespeare comedies.  Scandinavia is in crisis! While Sweden is hit by an apocalyptic incident, Ikea’s manuals having dramatically biodegraded, the ambitious Lady Bob takes over Finland by an unscrupulous coup d’etat.  Will her naive husband Bob, now puppet ruler of Finland, manage to save Scandinavia from his wicked wife and her devoted squad of murderous nuns and finally become a hero worthy of the bard?” –Gin & Tonic Productions, website description

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Le Off (Festival d'Avignon)   

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“The Festival d’Avignon celebrated its 70th edition in 2016 and while there were no major Shakespearean productions on the main programme, they dominated the programme of the Festival Off d’Avignon (the fringe festival). The only playwright whose works were performed and adapted more was Molière. From puppet shows to experimental takes on the tragedies, Le Off offered a wide range of Shakespeare for all ages.”

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Romeo and Juliet, Tower Theatre Company  

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Each year, London-based company Tower Theatre (one of the companies selected to be part of the RSC's 2016 A Midsummer Night's Dream "play for the nation" project) takes a production to the Pré Catalan garden in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. In 2016 - the 25th year of Tower Theatre in Paris - they presented Romeo and Juliet in the garden's Théâtre de Verdure du Jardin Shakespeare. The open-air theatre space is planted with flowers, trees and plants that are mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.

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Henry V, Antic Disposition

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Henry V, Antic Disposition

“England’s idealistic army marches to war, certain of a swift and glorious victory. France proudly rallies to defend her borders from invasion. But as nations clash, it is the common soldiers who pay the ultimate price in the bloody mud of the battlefield.

Marking both the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and the ongoing centenary of the First World War, Antic Disposition presents a new production of Shakespeare’s Henry V.

Performed by a combined cast of British and French actors, the uplifting production celebrates the rich and complex historical relationship between our two nations – from the Hundred Years War to the Entente Cordiale.”

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António e Cleópatra, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II

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António e Cleópatra, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II

“If we say one of the names, the other follows it. Our memory cannot evoke one without the other. Plutarch wrote that, from them on, love became the ability to see the world through the sensibility of someone else’s soul.

They mixed love and politics and came up with a politics of love. They are a historical love story. They are a romance based on real events often romanticized about. Shakespeare built them a verbal monument that turned into the truest of truths what never happened to them. In Mankiewicz’s film that led 20th Century Fox to bankruptcy, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were the celluloid and real couple they never – and always – were.

In this show written and directed by Tiago Rodrigues, Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz are the here-and-now duo of what they were there-and-then. They are and are not Antony and Cleopatra. They are Antony seeing the world through Cleopatra’s eyes. And vice-versa. Always vice-versa. Vice-versa as a rule of love. Vice-versa as a rule of theatre. This show is seeing the world vicariously, through the sensibility of the souls of Antony and Cleopatra.” (from the company programme)

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The Winter’s Tale, Cheek by Jowl

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“One of Shakespeare's greatest plays, The Winter's Tale, though written at the same period as The Tempest, smashes all the rules that The Tempest follows. Unity of time, place and action are hurled aside as we range across Europe, from court to country, from high tragedy to low comedy, across a time span of sixteen years.

The Winter's Tale tells of a delusional and paranoid king who tears his family apart. But this is the new Shakespeare, after he completed his great tragedies, and the tough struggle for redemption yields flickers of hope. Initial darkness gives way to joy as Time leads the characters to a shattering conclusion...

Produced by Cheek by Jowl in a co-production with the Barbican, London; Les Gémeaux/Sceaux/Scène Nationale; Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg; Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa; Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid (INAEM)” (Information from the Cheek by Jowl website)

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Hamlet, Globe to Globe Tour

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A two-year tour of Shakespeare’s most famous play to 197 countries in 202 venues across the world.

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