Tristan Brolly - Director
Adrian Lillie - Designer
Georgina King - Assistant Designer
Lisa Westerhout - Music
Philip Buck - Proteus
David Chittenden - Launce/Outlaw
Jonathan Coote - Duke/Antonio
Dafydd Gwyn Howells - Thurio/Eglamour/Outlaw
Deborah Mason - Lucetta/Outlaw/Host
George May - Valentine
Hannah Mercer - Julia
Charlotte Windmill - Sylvia/Crab
Kirsty Yates - Speed
still under construction...
Two friends, one love-struck and idle, the other with travel and adventure in his heart, fall
out over a woman abroad. It is a story that reverberates from Shakespearean times down
through the centuries to the present day. Yet The Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of
Shakespeare's earliest plays, is also one of his least performed. It carries with it an adversevcritical history, and certainly shows signs of the apprentice playwright in its inconsistencies and deficiencies. Some of which are perhaps due to the generally held view that the Folio text of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, was printed from an imperfect source, rather than the prompt copy. In this sense Shakespeare is let off the hook, for we shall never truly know The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and whether it is a more fully realized play than we read or see. Tristan Brolly
Certainly there are more sombre and sinister strands to the play: such as deception,
betrayal, murder and attempted rape, which sit oddly with the comic and high-spirited
tone of this romance tale. Then there is the somewhat infamously difficult final scene!
The challenge therefore in reviving the deceptively simple 'Two Gents' is how to make
sense of this dichotomy between the comic and sinister; to find a consistency between the
realistic characterisation of Julia, and the psychologically unmotivated actions of Proteus
and Valentine.
In the endeavour to clarify and illuminate the play, this production uses the influences of
Commedia dell' Arte, the spirit of E.M. Forster, and the historical perspective of 1920's
Italy. Furthermore the production has liberally borrowed certain rituals associated with
the Springtime Fertility Festival of May Day and the Maypole Dance, as well as the Masked
Parade of the Venice Carnevale.
We invite you therefore, in the exquisite grounds of Wadham College to sit back, keep
warm, and enjoy the tale of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. An under-valued play, in which
some of the fun is seeing the more mature plays in embryonic form.
Oxford 2003
