Overview of The Scottish Play through CNN style character interviews.
2005
A young harridan MP marries a title in order to advance towards her goal of becoming party leader.
A chef and his restaurant-hostess wife resort to murder to take ownership of a high-class Glaswegian restaurant.
1965
Henry IV usurps the English throne, sets in motion the factious War of the Roses and now faces a rebellion led by Northumberland scion Hotspur. Henry's heir, Prince Hal, is a ne'er-do-well carouser who drinks and causes mischief with his low-class friends, especially his rotund father figure, John Falstaff. To redeem his title, Hal may have to choose between allegiance to his real father and loyalty to his friend.
2011
The fat knight Sir John Falstaff imagines that Mistress Ford and Mistress Page are both taken with him and so, attracted as much by their husbands’ money as their personal charms, he decides to woo them both. But the women are up to the old lecher’s tricks and turn the tables on him with a series of humiliating assignations, midnight terrors and a very damp, extremely smelly laundry basket. Gutsy, colloquial and bustling with vivid characters, The Merry Wives of Windsor is a brilliantly constructed farce and the only comedy Shakespeare set in his native land. It is also the ancestor of English bourgeois comedy and gave birth to a tradition that reaches down to the modern TV sitcom. The production made merry with the relationship between the life of middle-class Elizabethan England and the late medieval period in which the play is set.
2010
A scholarly king and his three companions swear off the society of women for three years, only to have a diplomatic visit from a French princess and her three ladies-in-waiting thwart their intentions.
The Tudor Court is locked in a power struggle between its nobles and the Machiavellian Cardinal Wolsey, the King's first minister and the country's most conspicuous symbol of Catholic power. Wolsey's ambition knows no bounds and when his chief ally, Queen Katherine, interferes in the King's romance with Ann Bullen, he brings ruin upon himself, the Queen and centuries of English obedience to Rome.
Thea Sharrock's irresistible 2009 production of Shakespeare's popular romantic comedy stirs wit, sentiment, intrigue and love into a charming confection which challenges the traditional rules of romance. At its heart, a feisty but feminine Rosalind (Naomi Frederick), in love with the endearingly naïve Orlando (Jack Laskey), uses her disguise as Ganymede to counsel him playfully in the art of wooing. Distraction is provided by Dominic Rowan, a remarkably funny Touchstone, and Tim McMullan, whose sonorous tones are perfectly suited to the lugubrious wit of Jaques. Filmed in High Definition and true surround sound.
2012
Doctor Faustus is Christopher Marlowe's most renowned and controversial work. Famous for being the first dramatised version of the Faustus tale, the play depicts the sinister aftermath of Faustus's decision to sell his soul to the Devil's henchman in exchange for power and knowledge. In the first-ever staging of this menacing drama at the Globe Theatre, Matthew Dunster's production features Paul Hilton as the arrogant, power-hungry Faustus and Arthur Darvill as the sardonic Mephistopheles, and includes several impressive magical stunts along the way.
1991
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
1995
The evil Iago pretends to be friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own end in the film version of this Shakespeare classic.
1979
Two rival robotics companies in the future release their latest creations at a robotics convention, claiming each to be the latest and greatest in technological advances. Mega Stellar Company's release is a robot boy named Romie-O, while Super Solar Cybernetics has released a girl robot named Julie-8. Unforeseen to each of the company's creators, is how each of the advanced robots soon falls in love with the other.
1969
Shakespeare wrote this fantastic comedy in 1594. It features Lysander and Hermia, whose love is thwarted by Hermia's father, who wishes to marry her off to Demetrius, himself loved by Helena. In a magical forest, the couple cross paths with Obéron, king of the elves, who is quarreling with his wife and in possession of love potions.
2014
In this Broadway stage production, Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad take on the title characters in a modern adaptation of the timeless classic, Romeo and Juliet.
2016
Hamlet has the world at his feet. Young, wealthy and living a hedonistic life studying abroad. Then word reaches him that his father is dead. Returning home he finds his world is utterly changed, his certainties smashed and his home a foreign land. Struggling to understand his place in a new world order he faces a stark choice. Submit, or rage against the injustice of his new reality. Simon Godwin directs Paapa Essiedu as Hamlet in Shakespeare's searing tragedy. As relevant today as when it was written, Hamlet confronts each of us with the mirror of our own mortality in an imperfect world. Hamlet played in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until throughout summer 2016.
2000
Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.
1984
Ballet performance by The Royal Ballet, recorded at Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, July 1984.
2006
Half-caste bandit Omkara Shukla abducts his lady love, Dolly Mishra, from her family. Thanks to his cleverness, he gets away with the kidnapping. A conspiracy, however, forms against him when he denies his right-hand man, Langda Tyagi, a promotion. Ultimately, this plot threatens not only his relationship with Dolly, but their lives and those of their associates as well.
1964
The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet's uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. An historic BBC production taped on location in and around Kronborg castle in Elsinore (Denmark), in which the play is set.
A live performance of the play "Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare. Set in ancient Rome, leading citizens Cassius and Marcus Brutus are alarmed that the power and authority Caesar is assuming may endanger the democracy of the Republic, so they conspire to assassinate the popular general. The ensuing battles and suicides extend the tragedy, establishing neither a clear-cut hero nor villain.
In this modern adaptation of the classic Greek myth two young lovers bound by a tragic fate plot to escape their homes to start a new life somewhere far from their families.
