Hot on the heels of the news that a New York theater company will be staging “Richard III†in a suddenly historically correct parking lot, Shakespeare’s Globe has announced that it will take a touring production of the Henry VI trilogy to four English battle sites that figure in the plays.
After the premiere at the York Theater Royal in June the plays, directed by Nick Bagnall, will move to the battlefields at Tewkesbury, St Albans, Barnet and finally Towton, where the houses of York and Lancaster clashed in what is often said to be the bloodiest battle
Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s artistic director, told The Guardian that he wanted to increase the box office appeal of the trilogy, which has long generated debates over how much of it was actually written by Shakespeare.
“When you think of battlefields, you think of re-enactment and that’s usually deemed slightly circumspect, but the British are obsessed with our own history and that’s a really interesting way that we engage with it,†Mr. Dromgoole said.
The Shakespeare’s Globe season will also feature several productions at its open-air theater on the south bank of the Thames in London, including “The Tempest,†with the Olivier award winner Roger Allam as Prospero; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,†starring another ! Olivier winner, Michelle Terry, as Titania; and “Gabriel,†a new play by Sam Adamson about 17th-century musicians and their patrons, starring the trumpeter Alison Balsom.
