Free Monday Night Shakespeare Film Screenings

The Old Globe will once again share some of its favorite Shakespearean cinema as a complement to its stage productions with the return of Free Monday Night Film Screenings, presented in conjunction with the 2017 Summer Shakespeare Festival. Curated by the Globe’s Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein and introduced by Edelstein and KPBS’s "Cinema Junkie" Beth Accomando, the films include Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on June 26th, Peter Brook’s King Lear on July 17th, Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard on August 7th, and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet on August 28th. Admission is free. Seating for each film is first-come, first-served and by general admission. The line begins one hour before each screening.

Join us outdoors for the first film, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on Monday, June 26th at 8:15 p.m. in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. From the mind of award-winning director Julie Taymor (The Lion King on Broadway, Frida, Titus) comes a Shakespeare adaptation like none other. Rich with Taymor’s trademark creativity, this immersive and darkly poetic cinematic experience brings to life the play’s iconic fairies and the unsuspecting young lovers they meddle with. Filmed at Taymor’s sold-out stage production with cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto and music by Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal, the feats of visual imagination are ingenious and plentiful, but beating at the center of the film is an emotionally moving take on the deeper human aspects of Shakespeare’s beloved tale.

The epic King Lear follows on Monday, July 17 at 7:00 p.m., indoors on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in the Old Globe Theatre, part of the Conrad Prebys Theatre Center. Now considered one of the greatest stage productions of Shakespeare ever,Peter Brook’s direction of King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 was hugely influential in reinterpreting Shakespeare as a fresh, urgent, and modern voice. Following a successful world tour and Brook’s own increasing interest in filmmaking, the production was made into a movie in 1971, filming in a bleak and frozen Danish landscape. King Lear (Paul Scofield), elderly and ready to retire from the throne, decides to split his kingdom among his three daughters according to who best declaims her love for him. When his daughter Cordelia refuses to flatter her father’s ego with devotion, Lear angrily gives the lion’s share of his power to her sisters, Goneril and Regan. They soon abuse this trust, and Lear finds himself drifting into madness as his former empire falls apart, with little time left to right his wrongs.

Explore the mind of the artists as Al Pacino goes Looking for Richard on Monday, August 7, at 7:00 p.m., in the Old Globe Theatre. A workshop of Shakespeare’s Richard III inspires actor/director Al Pacino’s award-winning documentary. Though a noteworthy cast of stage actors and Hollywood stars (including Kevin Spacey, Winona Ryder, and Alec Baldwin) gathers to work on the play, Looking for Richard does not present a straightforward filmed version of the scheming, deformed king’s rise and fall. Instead, Pacino turns the cameras on the rehearsal process and his own exploration of Shakespeare’s history and meaning. Scenes in full costume alternate with readings in street clothes, while interviews gather the opinions on the Bard of everyone from renowned scholars and Shakespearean actors to random New Yorkers.

Late summer skies will provide the perfect setting in the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre on Monday, August 28 at 8:00 p.m. as Romeo + Juliet is updated by visionary director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby). Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy is updated to a postmodern Verona Beach where guns replace swords and bored youths are easily spurred toward violence. Longtime rivals in religion and business, the Montagues and the Capulets form rival gangs whose animosities spill into the streets. Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) is aloof toward the goings-on of his Montague cousins, but after he meets Juliet (Claire Danes), a Capulet, at a party one fateful night, his heart and his allegiance are pushed to the breaking point.

The 2017 Summer Shakespeare Festival includes Globe and television favorite Robert Sean Leonard (the Globe’s Pygmalion, "House") in the title role of one of the greatest of Shakespeare’s towering cycle of history plays, King Richard II, helmed byaward-winning director Erica Schmidt (Off Broadway’s A Month in the Country, All the Fine Boys, Humor Abuse) in her Globe debut. Convinced of his divine right to rule, King Richard acts recklessly and provides the canny Henry Bolingbroke an opening to seize the crown. Filled with magnificent verse and Shakespeare’s characteristic wisdom and insight, King Richard II is a deeply moving and insightful portrait of how the forces of history collide and combust to shape a nation’s political landscape. King Richard II plays June 11 – July 15, with opening night on June 18 in the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. Tickets start at $30 and are on sale now to the general public.

Shakespeare’s exhilarating tragedy Hamlet follows, with the Globe’s Barry Edelstein returning to the outdoor Festival Theatre stage to bring Shakespeare’s classic to life. He will direct a cast featuring some of the nation’s finest classical actors in one of the greatest plays ever written: revenge thriller, ghost story, psychological drama, political epic, and family saga, all packed in one with unforgettable characters, theatrical masterstrokes, and world famous lines. The Prince of Denmark comes home from college to find his father dead, his mother remarried to his uncle, and a spine-chilling apparition roaming the palace grounds. Hamlet will run August 6 – September 10, with opening night on August 12. Tickets start at $30 and go on sale to the general public onFriday, June 30.

Meanwhile, the classic musical fable of Broadway Guys and Dolls will play the indoor stage. Based on a story and characters of Damon Runyon, with music and lyrics byFrank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, Guys and Dolls will be directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, returning to the Globe after the great successes of Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery, which he directed, and Bright Star, which he choreographed. Roll the dice on our first-ever production of this Broadway masterpiece as Guys and Dolls runs July 2 – August 13, with opening night on July 7, presented in association with Asolo Repertory Theatre. Filled with gangsters and showgirls, Guys and Dolls features some of the most wonderful showtunes ever written, including "Luck Be a Lady," "I’ve Never Been in Love Before," and the irrepressible anthem "Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat." Guys and Dolls will put a spring in your step and a smile on your face and remind you how much fun it is to see a top-notch Globe revival of a classic American musical! Tickets start at $40 and are on sale now to the general public.

Rounding out the season will be Ken Ludwig’s Robin Hood! The inventive comic genius whose Baskerville brought Sherlock Holmes to the Globe is back with a brand-new Globe-commissioned world premiere comedy about another icon: Robin Hood. Packed with thrills, romance, laughs, and great characters like Little John, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian, Robin Hood! tells the timeless story of a hero of the people who takes on the powers that be. So get ready to duck a quarterstaff or two—you won’t want to miss a moment of the swashbuckling fun! Ken Ludwig’s Robin Hood! will play July 22 – August 27, with opening night on July 30. Tickets start at $39 and are on sale now to the general public.

Admission is free for the Monday night Shakespeare film screenings. Seating for each film is first-come, first-served and by general admission. Line begins one hour before each screening.

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