Patrick Page to Play Claudius in DC's 'Hamlet'

Patrick Page, currently starring as Shakespearean actor-manager Jefffrey Cordova in Dancing in the Dark (based on MGM's The Bandwagon) at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, will join the cast of Michael Kahn's staging of Hamlet at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC this Spring. The production will play ten free performances at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park, May 22-June 1.
 
Page, whose Broadway credits include The Grinch in How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Scar in The Lion King will play Hamlet's usurping uncle, Claudius. Page is a core member of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, having snagged the Helen Hayes Award for leading actor as Iago in Kahn's 2006 Othello. He also played the title role in the director's 2005 production of Macbeth.
 
Jeffrey Carlson, who starred in the company's summer 2007 mounting of Hamlet will reprise the title role. The production will be restaged by Alexander Burns. Page and Carlson will be joined onstage by Michelle Beck as Ophelia, Janet Zarish as Gertrude and Dakin Matthews as the Ghost of Hamlet's father, First Player and Gravedigger.
 
Additional information about the annual Free for All production is available on the company's website, ShakespeareTheatre.org. The Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Harman Center for the Arts is located at 516 8th Street SE in Washington, D.C.