From Thursday 26 November to Sunday 28 November, the Hampstead Players will be putting on four performances of William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at the Hampstead Parish Church in Church Row, NW3.
The Hampstead Players are celebrating 50 years since the theatre group was set up parish members by Graham and Sue Dowell. Following the success of their first 1976 production of The Lark, they just kept on going, and to date, the Hampstead Players have been producing two plays a year.
Although there are auditions for the plays, anyone is welcome to join the Hampstead Players, which comprises of amateur and professional actors.
Earlier this year, the theatre company staged Emma by Jane Austen and before that, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. (You can see the full list of all the plays they’ve produced on their website.)
The upcoming The Winter’s Tale is directed by Lucrezia Phifer, an actress with a lot of experience of Shakespeare and a previous residency at the Globe Theatre. “What excites me about The Winter’s Tale,” says Lucrezia, “is that it’s a play about time – in fact, time is personified in the play. The second half takes place after sixteen years. This reflects how the Hampstead Players, with its new and old members, covers two generations. In our cast of fourteen actors – the youngest is twenty-one, and the actor playing King Leontes has been a Hampstead Player for about thirty years. He starred in the production of The Winter’s Tale which the Players put on almost 16 years ago.”
The story opens in Sicilia with King Leontes suspecting his wife Queen Hermione who is eight months pregnant, of having been unfaithful with his childhood friend King Polixenes of Bohemia.
“After the baby Perdita is born, she is by order of Leontes left on the shores of Bohemia. And in the second half we learn what happened to her. To those who know this Shakespeare play, it features a famously bizarre stage direction – Exit, pursued by a bear – which I feel marks the shift from the tragedy of the first half to the comedy of the second half. The Winter’s Tale has many unexpected moments and at the end there’s a big twist,” Lucrezia explains.
In a final word about the play, Lucrezia adds, “I hope with our colourful production which also includes live guitars, flutes and classical singing, audiences will connect with the real and timeless emotions of The Winter’s Tale. And enjoy how in this, one of Shakespeare’s last plays, the Bard is being more experimental with verses and giving us such a great text to explore.”
For performance times and to buy tickets, visit: www.hampsteadplayers.org.uk
Cover Photo: The Hampstead Players in rehearsal
