Cast Set For ANTONY & CLEOPATRA From Red Bull Theater

RED BULL THEATER has announced the complete cast for the next offering of a new season of OBIE Award-winning Revelation Readings: Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, adapted by Dakin Matthews (who received a Drama Desk Award for his adaptation of Henry IV for Lincoln Center Theater), directed by Arin Arbus (Broadway: Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Off-Bway: Waiting for Godot, Des Moines, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, The Skin of Our Teeth  [OBIE Award], King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure, Othello [Lortel Awardd nomination], Macbeth - Theatre for a New Audience,  This event will premiere live in-person at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street at Hudson Street) on Monday March 25th at 7:30pm. This reading is presented in association with The Acting Company.


Tickets for this Revelation Reading are currently SOLD OUT. Interested patrons who wish to be notified of available seats should they become available can join the WAITLIST. 

 

Featured in the cast will be Carlo Alban ((Broadway: Sweat [Theatre World Award]; Off-Bway: Fuente Ovejuna, Tamburlaine, Parts I and II - Theatre for a New Audience; Intríngulis [playwright], Pinkolandia – INTAR; References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot - Public Theater); Isabel Arraiza (The Merchant of Venice - TFANA, Julius Caesar - Public Theater/Delacorte); Shirine Babb ((Broadway: The Piano Lesson, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; Macbeth - Lincoln Center Theater; The Merchant of Venice - Theatre for a New Audience/ Shakespeare Theatre Company; Timon of Athens - RSC/Shakespeare Theatre Co/TFANA);  Jimonn Cole (black odyssey - Classic Stage Company; Our Lady of 121st Street, Iphigenia 2.0 - Signature Theatre; X: Or, Betty Shabazz v. The Nation - The Acting Company; The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - New York Theatre Workshop/The Acting Company);  Dakin Matthews (Drama Desk Award - Henry IV - Lincoln Center Theater; Broadway: Camelot, Waitress, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Iceman Cometh, Macbeth, Gore Vidal's The Best Man, A Man for All Seasons, Julius Caesar); Ajay Naidu  (Waiting for Godot - TFANA, The Kid Stays in the Picture - Royal Court Theatre/Complicite, Indian Ink – Roundabout,  Little Flower of East Orange - Public Theater/LAByrinth, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui - National Actors Theater); Nicole Ari Parker as Cleopatra (Broadway: A Streetcar Named Desire - Outer Critics Circle nomination; Off-Bway: The Refuge Plays - New York Theatre Workshop/Roundabout; The Flatted Fifth - New Group; Film:  The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Boogie Nights, Remember the Titans, Brown Sugar, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Black Dynamite; TV: “Soul Food” - five NAACP Image Award nominations, “Empire.”, “And Just Like That....”); Matthew Rauch (Red Bull Theater's The Duchess of Malfi - Actors Equity Award/Joe A. Callaway Award, The Revenger's Tragedy, Edward II; Broadway: The Great Society, Junk, The Merchant of Venice, Prelude to a Kiss; TV: “Partner Track” - Netflix; “Banshee” - Cinemax; “Blue Bloods” - CBS); Ariel Shafir  (Richard III - Public Theater/Delacorte Theatre, Henry V - Public Theater's Mobile Shakespeare Unit, Mankind - Playwrights Horizons); Derek Smith (Broadway: The Green Bird - Tony nomination, Timon of Athens, Jackie, Getting and Spending, Ring Round The Moon, The Lion King; Off-Bway: Sylvia, The Green Bird - Obie Award, King John - Derwent Award, Red Bull Theater: The Government Inspector, Tis Pity She's A Whore, Dance of Death, The Witch of Edmonton -Calloway  Award, School for Scandal); and John Douglas Thompson as Antony (RBT: Women Beware Women; Tony Award nomination - Jitney; two Drama Desk Awards, two Obie Awards, Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award).
 

To purchase tickets, go to www.redbulltheater.com/antony-and-cleopatra.

 

In  this classic Jacobean tragedy of love and duty, Cleopatra the Egyptian Queen, and the Roman general Marc Antony scandalize Egypt and Rome alike through their passionate love affair, setting off a chain of broken alliances, jealous rages and civil war that reverberate through the known world in one of Shakespeare's greatest historical love stories.

 

Revelation Readings offer the unique opportunity to hear rarely-produced classic plays, and brand new plays in conversation with the classics, performed by the finest actors in New York. This year's slate of readings is sure to delight audiences all season long. 

“Antony and Cleopatra is one of only two Shakespeare plays to include a woman's name in its title. This unusual framing identifies the play, like Romeo and Juliet, as a love tragedy, an intrinsically hybrid genre combining tragedy's emphasis on a powerful man's fall with comedy's focus on the pleasure of surrendering to passion. It also signals a surprising balance of the sexes. Performed by apprentice boy actors, Shakespeare's women typically have smaller roles than their male counterparts, but even with fewer lines, Cleopatra repeatedly interrupts and upstages Antony with demands, declarations, threats, and laments. Even more significantly, by outlasting and memorializing him, she claims the final word in shaping their story. Just as she refuses to be overshadowed by her famous lover, she similarly refuses to surrender to Rome's imperial power. In the play's contest between empire against love, Cleopatra might lose the battle, but she wins the war: Rome ultimately defeats Egypt, but Antony, as well as dignity, remains hers. The play's Roman characters repeatedly express bewilderment at Cleopatra's power over their storied hero: who is she, to ensnare Antony?,” said Tanya Pollard, Professor of English, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.  To learn more, visit www.redbulltheater.com/antony-and-cleopatra 

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