UK Theatre Network

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players,

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

Simon Callow who has recently brought us his successful and carefullly researched one-man show The Mystery of Charles Dickens and the excellent Dr Marigold & Mr Chops is now exploring what it was like to be Shakespeare. Written by Shakespeare scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate, the play brings to life both the man and the world he lived in.

Using the Seven Ages of Man speech as a framework the play skillfully interweaves passages from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets with relevant facts about life in Elizabethan times. Simon Callow fills the stage with Shakespeare’s real and imagined world quickly switching from his role as a narrator to various Shakespearean characters. Directed by the talented Tom Cairns the production recounts Shakespeare’s life from his birth and his miraculous survival of the bubonic plague when he was only two months old to his grammar school education that must have been the best preparation a future playwright could hope for, his beginnings as a writer in a „play factory“, his first big success with Henry VI, the highlights of his career and finally his retirement after his last play Thomas More – a collaborative effort that was never performed during Shakespeare’s lifetime.  We encounter Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Southampton, De Montaigne, Richard Burbage, Will Kemp and many others and learn about the brutal reality of life in Elizabethan England when people lived in a constant state of war and experienced an average of 800 hangings per year.

This round production impresses with its plethora of information whilst being highy entertaining, funny, touching, tragic, thoughtful, and poetic. Simon Callow’s brilliant celebration of Shakespeare – The Man from Stratford should not be missed.

The show runs until 31 July 2010 at the Richmond Theatre and will then proceed directly to the Assembly Halls in Edinburgh.

Richmond Theatre,The Green, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1QJ
http://www.ambassadortickets.com/1754/659/Richmond/Richmond-Theatre/Shakespeare