The full company has been confirmed to join Stephen Dillane in Sam Mendes’s second Bridge Project double-bill at the Old Vic next year.
Ron Cephas Jones, Thomas Sadoski and Michelle Beck join Dillane, Christian Camargo and Juliet Rylance in leading the transatlantic company which will perform Shakespeare’s As You Like It and The Tempest in repertory at both the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the Old Vic. Anne-Marie Duff, who was expected to star in the productions, has withdrawn due to illness in her family.
American actors Cephas Jones (Charles/Caliban) and Sadoski (Touchstone/ Stephano) have both been seen on the New York stage of late; Cephas Jones in Gem Of The Ocean and the LAByrinth Theater Company’s production of Jesus Hopped The A-Train, and Sadoski in Reasons To Be Pretty. Beck (Celia/Ceres) appeared in 2007 film Spinning Into Butter. They join Camargo, who plays Orlando and Ariel, British actress Rylance (Rosalind/Miranda) and Dillane (Jacques/ Prospero) in the two productions directed by Mendes.
The company also features British actor Edward Bennett, who made his name in the West End last year when he stepped into the role of Hamlet after David Tennant was forced to pull out due to a back injury.
Completing the cast are America’s Ashlie Atkinson, Jenni Barber, Alvin Epstein, Jonathan Fried and Aaron Krohn, and Britain’s Anthony O’Donnell, Richard Hansell, Michael Thomas and Ross Waiton.
The three-year Bridge Project is an international collaboration between Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, BAM and the Old Vic which began with The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale earlier this year.
As You Like It and The Tempest will play at BAM in January 2010 and come to the Old Vic from 12 June to 21 August.
CB