Hall Propels All-male Comedy & Richard III Tours
Not content with inaugurating his reign at Hampstead Theatre – where his impressive first programme, announced last week, includes big-hitters Mike Leigh, Athol Fugard and Shelagh Stephenson – director Edward Hall has announced the most ambitious season to date for Propeller, the all-male Shakespeare company that he founded in 1997.
Hall himself will direct new productions of Richard III and The Comedy of Errors, which will be performed in repertory on a 17-stop national and international tour, including dates at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music and a return to Propeller’s home base at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire, where Hall serves as an artistic associate.
Both productions are designed by Hall’s long-time Propeller collaborator Michael Pavelka. The pair’s take on Richard III, taking its inspiration from Grand Guignol and Hammer horror films, will be the sixth and final chapter in Hall’s staging of Shakespeare’s complete Wars of the Roses cycle. Amongst that cycle, Hall’s 2002 offering of Rose Rage, a two-part adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy, transferred to the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.
The 2010/11 Propeller season is completed by a third new production, also directed by Hall, of Pocket Dream, a 60-minute children’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which will tour schools in England and Wales.
Richard III and The Comedy of Errors are presented in association with The Touring Partnership, a consortium of nine of the UK’s leading regional theatres. Richard III launches from Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre on 18 November 2010 before visiting Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre and a festival in Girona.
Richard III is joined in rep by The Comedy of Errors at Sheffield Lyceum from 19 January 2011 and then the two productions visit Newcastle, Coventry, Norwich, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Salford, Newbury (13-30 April) and Plymouth. There are also international dates in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Boston, Neuss and Galway and, for The Comedy of Errors, at New York’s BAM (16-27 March).
