The Shakespeare’s Globe has confirmed casting for two productions opening the new year at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. 

Running at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from the 26th January until the 16th April, Annie Ryan’s production of John Webster’s The White Devil will star Kate Stanley-Brennan, Jamie Ballard, Joseph Timms, Paul Bazely and Michael Feast.

In the shadows of the court and the darkness of the human heart, greed and lust corrupt and breed murderous atrocity. Consumed by a violent passion for all things forbidden, the Duke of Brachiano murders his wife in order to possess another woman, triggering a cycle of violence, deceit and madness that shatters family bonds and moral values.

John Webster’s dark play is loosely based on real-life events from Renaissance Italy and is a tale of betrayal and revenge.

Meanwhile, closing the Winter season will be a new production of Shakespeare’s Othello, directed by Ellen McDougall, running at the theatre from the 23rd February until the 22nd April.

This new production of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy will star Kurt Egyiawan, Sam Spruell, Natalie Klamar, Thalissa Teixeira and Joanna Horton.

Othello is a successful and celebrated hero. He lives in a world that seems to be tolerant, but when he marries his love, Desdemona, his best friend Iago helps to turn Othello into an object of envy and mistrust. So-called tolerance becomes thinly veiled prejudice as Iago rewrites the narrative of the world and people are quickly reduced to fixed gender and racial ‘types’.

Moving between different eras, Ellen McDougall’s production considers how this 400 year old play is still very much relevant to the world in which we live now.

For more information on both productions, visit: http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/