A little London rain couldn’t stop this stellar cast from performing Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year – Live! at Regents Park Open Air Theatre! The evening was curated by the brilliant Allie Esiri in which actors read extracts from her anthology, Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year, an inspiring collection of 365 speeches and scenes from across all of Shakespeare’s plays.
In an interview before the one-night-only performance, Damian tells The Times:
“I will do whatever Allie asks me to do. I really adore Allie and poetry, and reading poetry out loud to people at the Open Air Theatre. There’s nothing more to it than that. I’ll put on a dress if that’s what she wants me to do.”
This performance has also marked Damian’s return to Open Air Theatre thirty years after he played the title role in Hamlet as a 23 year old young kid, ahem, actor. He comments on his return to Open Air Theatre in The Times interview:
“I’ll certainly feel nostalgic for the time that I played Hamlet in 1994. It will be wonderful to be back on that stage.”
And it certainly was! I so wish he did but Damian did not need to put on a dress for the show 🙂 He played Mark Antony from Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2, Quince from A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet from Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, Posthumus from Cymbeline Act 2, Scene 5, and Henry V from Henry V Act 5, Scene 2.
In the interview with The Times, Damian is asked about Hamlet. The play is at least partly about grief and whether the fact that Damian lost Helen three years ago would inform his performance on stage.
“I think, if it does, it will happen innately, subliminally,” he allows. “To me it is a speech about a man contemplating suicide. It is profound. It has some of the most beautiful writing in English language in it. He’s a philosopher prince, a man stifled by inaction because of his ability to think so deeply about everything.”
I don’t know about the other actors on stage but I have noticed that the parts Damian performed on stage has connections to his own stage work. As we talked about earlier, Damian played the title role in Hamlet in 1994 at the Open Air Theatre. He also played Posthumus in Cymbeline as a young actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company. Damian’s performance of Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech in the Guardian Solos has received high accolades. And, funny enough, Damian played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was 12 years old!
Allie Esiri shares with The Times that Damian asked her to play Posthumus in the show. Esiri says that the misogyny of the speech Damian had to give is really “a hell of a warning about where jealousy can lead.”
And our guy had family supporting him from the stalls, too! His brother Gareth was there, and so were his children Manon and Gulliver. Visit our gallery for more photos from the event!
“We are all so incredibly lucky that these fantastic actors came out to support my mission to help bring poetry and Shakespeare to the widest possible audience. It was an absolute joy to watch these superb actors bring poetry to life by reimagining some of Shakespeare’s best loved speeches, scenes and sonnets in their own special way, and remarkably with only a couple of hours rehearsal.”
Standing ovation for the cast and also for the audience who sat through the performance under non-stop rain! BRAVO!
Appendix: List of Performers and Full Programme
Paul Chahidi, Toheeb Jimoh, Damian Lewis, Stephen Mangan, Tracy Ann Oberman, Tony Robinson, Danny Sapani, Samantha Spiro, Samuel West, Luke Thompson, Olivia Williams, Susan Wokoma
Act 1 (approx 55 minutes)
Henry V, Prologue | Samuel West as Chorus
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5 | Tony Robinson as Malvolio
Venus and Adonis | extract Danny Sapani
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2 | Susan Wokoma as Juliet & Toheeb Jimoh as Romeo
Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 4 | Olivia Williams as Isabella
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 4, Scene 3 | Luke Thompson as Berowne
Sonnet 29 | Danny Sapani
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3 | Stephen Mangan as Parolles
Henry VI, Part 1, Act 1, Scene 2 | Susan Wokoma as Joan la Pucelle
The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 5 | Samantha Spiro as Katherine, Danny Sapani as Petruchio and Paul Chahidi as Hortensio
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2 | Damian Lewis as Mark Antony
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 | Paul Chahidi as Jaques
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1 | Susan Wokoma as Bottom, Damian Lewis as Quince, TBC as Snout and Paul Chahidi as Starveling
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2 | Samantha Spiro as Hermia, Olivia Williams as Helena, Stephen Mangan as Lysander & Samuel West as Demetrius
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1 | Damian Lewis as Hamlet
A Silly Poem by Spike Milligan | Tony Robinson
Interval (20 minutes)
Act 2 (approx 35 minutes)
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 2, Scene 3 | Samuel West as Benedick & Samantha Spiro as Beatrice
Much Ado About Nothing, Act 4, Scene 1 | Samuel West as Benedick & Samantha Spiro as Beatrice
King John, Act 3, Scene 4 | Olivia Williams as Constance, Toheeb Jimoh as Pandolph & Danny Sapani as King Philip
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 | Stephen Mangan as Polonius
Cymbeline, Act 2, Scene 5 | Damian Lewis as Posthumus
Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Scene 2 | Olivia Williams as Cleopatra
Measure for Measure, Act 3, Scene 1 | Toheeb Jimoh as Claudio
Richard II, Act 5, Scene 5 | Samuel West as Richard II
Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2 | Damian Lewis as Henry V & Paul Chahidi as Katharine
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3 | Tony Robinson as Porter
Sonnet 116 | Toheeb Jimoh
The Merchant of Venice, Act 3, Scene 1 | Tracy Ann Oberman as Shylock
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4 | Danny Sapani as King Lear & Samantha Spiro as Goneril
The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1 | Luke Thompson as Prospero
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1 | Tony Robinson as Puck
