Actress Naomi Frederick is to be joined by a cast with a wealth of London stage experience in the Thea Sharrock-directed production of As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer.
National Theatre regulars Tim McMullan (Jacques) and Dominic Rowan (Touchstone) join Frederick in Shakespeare’s comedy, alongside Jack Laskey, who returns to the Bankside venue following recent outings in In Extremis and Antony And Cleopatra, and original History Boy Jamie Parker.
McMullan can currently be seen at the National’s Lyttelton theatre, appearing in Burnt By The Sun. It is just one in a long list of credits at the venue, which also includes Present Laughter, Coram Boy, The Alchemist, Theatre Of Blood, His Dark Materials and Three Sisters. On film he has been seen in The Queen, Shakespeare In Love, Plunkett And Maclean and Shadowlands.
Rowan has a similarly long list of National Theatre appearances including Happy Now?, Dream Play, Iphigenia At Aulis, Mourning Becomes Electra and Three Sisters. He has also worked across London in productions including Lobby Hero, A Voyage Round My Father, Under The Blue Sky and, most recently, After Dido.
Parker is another NT alumni, performing in London, on Broadway and on film as Scripps in Alan Bennett’s hugely successful play The History Boys, while Laskey is a founder member of theatre company The Factory who appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 2008 productions of The Merchant Of Venice, The Taming Of The Shrew and The Tragedy Of Thomas Hobbes, and worked with Punchdrunk on the groundbreaking 2007 production The Masque Of The Red Death.
As You Like It stars Fredrick (Brief Encounter, Mrs Affleck) as Rosalind, the daughter of a banished duke who finds herself thrown out of court and goes to seek her father in the Forest of Arden. Disguised as a boy, she meets the man who has won her heart and teaches him the art of seduction.
It is the third production in the Globe’s 2009 season entitled Young Hearts, following Romeo And Juliet and the revival of Che Walker’s The Frontline. Also included in the season are Shakespeare’s Troilus And Cressida and Love’s Labour’s Lost, Frank McGuinness’s new version of Euripides’s Helen and the world premiere of Trevor Griffiths’s A New World.
MA