RED BULL RAMPANT. To 15 October

400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's Rival: Clerkenwell's Red Bull Playhouse.The Lion's Part is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the building of the Red Bull with a staged reading of Thomas Heywood's The Rape of Lucrece and an academic conference at the London Metropolitan Archive.

The Rape of Lucrece by Thomas Heywood was one of the Red Bull's greatest commercial and artistic successes. Its thrilling combination of politics, madness, sexual crime and war in both intimate and epic writing was repeatedly revived, while the play's unsettling repertoire of popular song grew with each revival.

This will be a staged rehearsed reading at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, directed by Sonia Ritter

Performances Thursday 6th, Friday 7th, Saturday 8th October.

Conference: Beyond Shakespeare's Globe at the London Metropolitan Archive, Saturday 15th October 2005

Company: the Lions part ( www.thelionspart.co.uk email info@thelionspart.co.uk )

The Red Bull

The Red Bull Playhouse was an open-yard theatre which lay just off St John¹s Street in Clerkenwell. Built in 1605, it was a hugely successful rival to the Globe, and to Shakespeare's company The King's Men. The resident Red Bull company, the Queen's Servants, performed a remarkable repertoire citizen's dramas (including Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness), Jacobean tragedy (such as Webster's The White Devil) and a range of popular music-based entertainment. Remarkably, and almost uniquely, the theatre survived the ravages of the Civil War and Cromwell's puritans, and remained open throughout the Interregnum. The site of the theatre can still be discerned as Heyward's Place in EC1.

The Play

In this extraordinary play, unlike Shakespeare in his long poem, Thomas Heywood shows the full political build-up to the violation of the young Roman matron Lucrece, and its warlike results. Heywood stages intimacy and battle, inner madness and outward pomp in a manner unequalled in the theatre of the age. An extraordinary counterpoint to the mayhem appears in the interweaving of popular satirical song, making this possibly England's first stage musical. The play remained popular for decades, and we perform it from a newly-prepared script transcribed from the British Library and edited by Dr Eva Griffith, a member of The Lion's Part and the foremost authority on the Red Bull.

The performance will be accompanied with live incidental music as well as the songs.

The Company
The Lion's Part is a professional company specialising in verse drama and celebration. The company has performed at Shakespeare's Globe and its own seasonal festivals on the Bankside; at Hampton Court, the Painted Hall at Greenwich and on tour all over the country; while its members' work includes the RSC, National Theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, Original Shakespeare Company and the West End. They staged a similar event on the architectural remains of the Rose Theatre in Southwark, producing Marlowe's Dr Faustus (with Anton Lesser and David Bradley as Faust and Mephistopheles, also directed by Sonia Ritter). The company has charitable status with an educational remit, and aims to raise the profile of the Red Bull in the media, among theatre professionals and in academia, as well as with the theatre-going public.

"One of the most thrilling and fulfilling experiences for both audience and ourselves the performers, that I can recallÅ the separation between audience and performers now has the potential to dissolve."
Anton Lesser (of Dr Faustus at the Rose)

The company's patron is Mark Rylance, and until his recent death, the much-loved playwright Christopher Fry.

"The Lion's Part are an exceptionally talented and innovative company pushing the boundaries of dramatic invention." Christopher Fry

"The Lion's Part are an energetic and exciting company with much to contribute to the world of theatre in the area of ensemble playing and storytelling and their work is characterised by a positive vitality and a festive spirit. They deserve to be seen by a wider audience, and Shakespeare's Globe has played host to this company many times."
Mark Rylance, Artistic director, Shakespeare's Globe

The Venue:
The 12th century Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great is one of the treasures of the City of London. Built when Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, was King of England, it survived the Great Fire of 1666 and the bombs dropped in Zeppelin raids in World War I and the Blitz in World War II. It has an extraordinarily good acoustic for speech and a beautiful and atmospheric interior, recognisable from the films Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love and The End of the Affair, and in BBC 2's Madame Bovary.

Sponsors:
The Garfield Weston Foundation
The Worshipful Company of Mercers
The Worshipful Company of Skinners (Lady Neville Charity)
Private sponsors include Tom Stoppard and Sir Eddie Kulukundis.

2005-09-20 12:06:21