I’m sure most of us remember the film with Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow – and Judi Dench famously winning the best supporting actress Oscar for 8 minutes of screen time. Well, now it’s your chance to see this delightful story live on the stage at Lewes’s own Little Theatre.
Often, when a film is adapted for the stage, it can be episodic and oddly unsatisfying – however I am delighted to tell you this is emphatically not the case here. Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman’s film script has been brilliantly adapted by Lee Hall (Billy Elliot, War Horse, The Pitmen Painters and Rocketman) and if anything is even more satisfying. It’s certainly moving, exciting and very funny. True, it plays very fast and loose with historical accuracy, but I think what it does brilliantly is capture the flavour of just how it must have been on Bankside back in those heady days of the late 1500s, when theatre was exploding into the most exciting entertainment art form of the time. It also brilliantly pops the bubble of reverence surrounding Shakespeare – showing us a man with doubts and flaws, like all of us. And above all – it’s a heart rendingly moving love story.
It will be a huge challenge to stage this – a large cast, lots of costumes and a complex set – but it will be worth all the effort. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to direct this as my first show here at Lewes Little Theatre after more than seventy plays elsewhere, many of them Shakespeare and mostly large casts. Please contact Director Gary Andrews on gary@egotripmedia.co.uk with any questions.