Olivier Award-winning actress Samantha Spiro will star in Shakespeare’s Globe’s production of the Bard’s controversial comedy The Taming Of The Shrew this summer.
Directed by Toby Frow, The Taming Of The Shrew plays as part of the Southbank venue’s The Play’s The Thing season. Spiro will be joined in the season’s cast by the previous announced Mark Rylance and Jamie Parker, plus fellow History Boys star Samuel Barnett and Jerusalem’s Jonny Flynn.
Spiro, who will take on the role of Katherina from 23 June, was most recently seen on the London stage in Chicken Soup With Barley at the Royal Court. Her extensive theatre credits include Hello, Dolly!, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Macbeth for the Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, Twelfth Night for the Donmar Warehouse atthe Wyndham’s theatre, and Two Thousand Years and Cleo, Camping, Emanuelle And Dick for the National Theatre. The actress is to return to the stage next month when she will make her Almeida theatre debut in Filumena.
Barnett and Flynn will both make their Shakespeare’s Globe debuts alongside Rylance in the revivals of Tim Carroll’s all-male productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III.
Barnett’s theatre credits include Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and Women Beware Women and His Dark Materials at the National Theatre. The actor originated the role of Posner in Alan Bennett’s phenomenally successful The History Boys, performing the part at the NT and on Broadway, as well as appearing in the subsequent film adaptation.
As well as Flynn’s recent role alongside Rylance in Jerusalem, the actor and musician appeared in The Heretic at the Royal Court and is a regular member of Edward Hall’s Propeller theatre company.
Booking for The Play’s The Thing season opens to the public on Monday 13 February. 2012 will also see the theatre stage the ambitious multi-lingual Globe to Globe festival in April.
CM