Globe Theatre returns to Kilkenny
Following on from its highly successful Irish debut at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2012, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is set to return there in August. This year, director Joe Murphy will bring another of the Bard’s great comedies to the medieval splendor of the Castle Yard: The Taming of the Shrew.
Shakespeare’s outrageous comedy tells the story of two wealthy sisters in Padua must be married off. But will the swaggering adventurer, Petrucio be up to the task of taming the ungovernable Katherina? Flirtation, trickery and a good dash of Shakespearean wit played out before the ‘shrew’ is seemingly transformed into a dutiful wife.
Performed on a recreated Elizabethan ‘Booth stage’, and featuring one of theatre’s great double-acts, The Taming of the Shrew is a frenetic and linguistically gymnastic screwball comedy tailor-made for this beautiful space
The Taming of the Shrew will be performed at Castle Yard, Kilkenny Castle from 9th to 18th August as part of Shakespeare’s Globe tour travelling around UK, Europe and Asia and of course Kilkenny.
The Taming of the Shrew will be performed with an all-female cast, as in was in the play’s inaugural performance at the Globe in 2003. Kate Lamb takes on the role of Katherina while Leah Whitaker plays Petrucio. The play will be directed by Joe Murphy, who is also the Artistic Director of Nabokov, an acclaimed new writing company. Designer Hannah Clark won the Linbury Biennial Prize for Stage Design in 2005.
Kate Lamb trained at LAMDA and her previous credits include Smack Family Robinson (Rose Theatre) Summer & Smoke, (Southwark Playhouse) and After The Party (Criterion Theatre). Leah Whitaker trained at RADA and has previously appeared in The Heretic (Royal Court), Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Milton Rooms).
Kilkenny Arts Festival has a long history of presenting Shakespeare classics outdoors. The medieval fabric of the city has proven ideal for open-air shows with Kilkenny Castle at the heart of the city providing a superb backdrop for the Bickerstaffe Theatre company productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth in the 1990s.