Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Neil Bartlett
Composer/Musical Direction by Joseph Atkins
Set Design by Elaine Chiang
Costume Design & Making by Ismini Papaioannou
Lighting Design by Aidan McLeo
Sound Design by Chloe Deacon
Costume Supervisor Bex Kemp
Performed by Joseph Benjamin Baker, Kenna Bethany, Nell Booton, Aoife Cassidy, Joseph Edwards, Felisha Grace, Paige Levy, Michael Murray, Nay Oliver Murphy, Shannon Ong, Ayọ̀ Owóyẹmi-Peters, Shyam Patel, Tzarina-Nassor
full credits
Production Photography: Patrick Baldwin
In this adaptation by Neil Bartlett, a cohort of 13 young actors in base costumes, play 40 different roles. The characters move from an authoritarian, strict, patriarchal framework that dominates the court, to the free, entropic spatial context of the forest. The costumes in court have an aura of a contemporary corporate world -cold, repressed, violent, controlled, and hierarchical, translated to slim figures, sleek textures, and dull, darker colours. The costumes in the forest refer to a contemporary agricultural world. They have an association to the chaos of childhood, translated to brighter colours, chunkier figures, and lack of uniformity. Within this environment, we see fugitives, who once belonged to the court being in disguise, , wrapping themselves in the comfort of a combination of fabrics that are often used to offer protection: furniture removal blankets, sleeping bags, survival blankets, felt blankets. The choice of materials has a reference to moving, and travelling, but also to humans temporarily inhabiting rural, natural environments.