ACCESS MATTERS Photograph of Gregory Doran by Jillian Edelstein, illustration by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
Welcome to the September 2014 – March 2015 season and the latest edition of Access Matters Having started our journey through the Shakespeare canon in 2013, we now match two comedies together for the first time: Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing. It has always struck me that these two plays belong together – at the end of the first play, the two sparring lovers are separated; at the start of the second, two sparring lovers meet again after a long absence. We think that Shakespeare was writing about the same characters, and that Much Ado About Nothing may have also been known during Shakespeare’s lifetime as Love’s Labour’s Won, so we present the play under this title in the new season. Christopher Luscombe sets the plays on either side of the First World War.
The Company will also produce a family production over the winter, The Christmas Truce. Based on the events surrounding the truce on the front line in 1914, Phil Porter’s new play draws on the experiences of the Warwickshire Regiment to tell this remarkable and uplifting story. Other highlights of the season include the continuation of the Roaring Girls season in the Swan Theatre, with Eileen Atkins returning to the company to play the title role in The Witch of Edmonton. This is a season of moving and also funny plays that celebrates our role as a Company who create work by Shakespeare, his contemporaries and our contemporaries on an epic scale, but who also remain proudly rooted in the community of our Warwickshire home. Gregory Doran Artistic Director
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