Laurence Olivier Award-winning actor Matthew Kelly has been cast in Shakespeare’s Globe’s upcoming production of Troilus And Cressida.
Kelly is joined in the Matthew Dunster-directed production by Laura Pyper and Paul Stocker as the eponymous lovers, Jamie Ballard, Paul Hunter, Chris Colquhoun, Trystan Gravelle, Ben Bishop, Olivia Chaney, Matthew Flynn, Richard Hansell, Fraser James, Seamus O’Neill, Ania Sowinski, John Stahl, Jay Taylor, Beru Tessema and Chinna Wodu.
Kelly, who won his Laurence Olivier Award in 2004 for his performance in Of Mice And Men, is best known as the former host of hit talent show Stars In Their Eyes, and has recently been seen in the West End in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
He plays the uncle of Cressida in Shakespeare’s tale of lovers forced to separate by a treacherous father during the Trojan War with Greece.
Pyper, who plays his niece Cressida, was a regular in supernatural Sky1 series Hex and will play Jane Fairfax in the new adaptation of Emma to be screened later this year. On stage, her credits include the Donmar Warehouse’s Don Juan In Soho. Stocker’s most recent London outing came in Overspill at the Soho theatre.
In Ballard, Colquhoun and Gravelle, the cast has a trio of performers with a wealth of Shakespearean credits with the Royal Shakespeare Company, while Hunter returns to the Globe following his 2008 performance as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Troilus And Cressida, which runs from 12 July until 20 September, is the fourth production in Shakespeare’s Globe’s 2009 season of Young Hearts. The collection of plays linked by youthful love also includes Romeo And Juliet, As You Like It, Helen, A New World – A Life Of Thomas Paine and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
MA