Fall 2006 - Hamlet
Left to right:
Geoffrey Beevers - Polonius, Osric, 4th Player, 1st Grave-digger, Norwegian Captain, Marcellus, Priest
Anna Northam - Gertrude, Ophelia, 2nd Player, Sailor
Richard Stacey - Hamlet, Bernardo, Fortinbras
Terence Wilton - Claudius, Ghost, 1st Player, Francisco, Reynaldo, 2nd Grave-digger
Robert Mountford - Horatio, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, 3rd Player
Synopsis
King Hamlet of Denmark has died. His brother, Claudius, has become king and married King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude. Young Hamlet has come home from university for his father's funeral and his mother's rapid remarriage. Denmark is nervously preparing for war with Norway whose previous king, Fortinbras, had been beaten by King Hamlet, losing territory as a result. Two soldiers, Marcellus and Barnardo, and Hamlet's friend Horatio see a ghost, apparently of the late King Hamlet, appear at midnight on the battlements of Elsinore. When Hamlet watches with them the next night, the ghost tells him privately that Claudius had murdered him by pouring poison in his ear and urges Hamlet to revenge his death.
Hamlet, unsure whether the ghost speaks the truth, acts like a madman, prompting Claudius, Gertrude and the king's counselor Polonius to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, college friends of Hamlet, to spy on Hamlet and find out what causes his madness. Hamlet's bizarre behavior, especially towards Polonius' daughter Ophelia prompts Polonius to believe Hamlet's madness is caused by his love for her. Polonius has allowed his son Laertes to return to France (sending Reynaldo to spy on him) and has ordered Ophelia to keep clear of Hamlet. Meanwhile, Hamlet muses on what has happened and tries to decide what to do. He convinces a visiting troupe of traveling actors to put on a performance of a play, The Murder of Gonzago, whose action is like Claudius' deed. Claudius leaves the performance before it is over, convincing Hamlet both of the ghost's veracity and of his uncle's guilt. Gertrude tries to reason with Hamlet after the play, allowing Polonius to spy on the conversation. Hamlet hears Polonius and kills him through the hangings, thinking he is Claudius. The ghost appears and chides Hamlet for delaying. Claudius sends Hamlet to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with secret orders to the English court to kill Hamlet on arrival. On his way to England Hamlet sees Young Fortinbras, nephew to the current King of Norway, leading an army to fight for land in Poland.
Ophelia reacts to her father's death at her lover's hands by going mad and, falling in a stream, drowns. Laertes, blaming Claudius for his father's death, returns at the head of a mob. En route to England, Hamlet finds Claudius' orders and rewrites them to order Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed. He is kidnapped by pirates but finds his way back to Denmark, returning to find himself watching Ophelia's funeral. Claudius and Laertes plot Hamlet's murder in a fencing bout between Hamlet and Laertes: the latter will have a poisoned sword and with a poisoned drink as a back-up. But now the action races to its conclusion with multiple deaths and a regime change.
Actor Biographies
Geoffrey Beevers attended Oxford University and then trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). His professional experience includes the following:
Theatre: The UN Inspector, Playing with Fire, The Winter's Tale (National Theatre); Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night (English Touring Theatre); The Taming of the Shrew (Bristol Old Vic); A Passage to India (Shared Experience); The Antipodes, Horatio in Hamlet (Shakespeare's Globe); A Servant to Two Masters, Pericles, Henry VIII, Comedy of Errors, The Devils, The Time of Your Life, Red Star, Mother Courage (Royal Shakespeare Company); The Crucible, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet (Young Vic); The Robbers (The Gate); The Tower (Almeida); King Lear in King Lear (Madison, Wisconsin); Prospero in The Tempest, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (AFTLS tours); King Lear, Uncle Vanya, Dr. Knock (Orange Tree).
Television: The Genius of Mozart; Island at War; Poirot; Goodnight, Mister Tom; Silent Witness; Prime Suspect; The Buddha of Suburbia; War and Remembrance; Magnum, P.I.; MacGuyver; Measure for Measure; Hamlet; Sherlock Holmes; Inspector Morse; Red Dwarf; Harry Enfield; Yes, Prime Minister; A Very Peculiar Practice; Doctor Who; The Marlowe Inquest; A Very British Coup; The Jewel in the Crown.
Film: Victor/Victoria, Curse of the Pink Panther, The Woodlanders, Fragile, Miss Potter.
Radio: Many plays and poetry readings for the BBC; book readings include Pilgrim's Progress, Zuleika Dobson.
Geoffrey also writes and directs. His adaptation of George Eliot's Adam Bede won a Time Out Award, which celebrates the best of London's live art scene. This is Geoffrey's third tour with Actors From The London Stage.
Robert Mountford trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where he won the Lilian Baylis Award in 1999. Recent theatre credits include Bassanio and Launcelot Gobbo in Merchant of Venice, Dr. Stockman in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (UK Tours for TARA Arts), Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Orlando in As You Like It (UK Tours), Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing (St.Andrews, Scotland), Maneer in Ayub Khan Din's East is East (Leicester Haymarket), and Solanio in a world tour of Merchant of Venice for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Robert's television work includes Hussein in Channel Four's award-winning drama series North Square, as well as Eastenders, Casualty, Doctors, The World According to Bex, and Everything I Know About Men, all for the BBC. He also appeared in Always and Everyone and London's Burning for Granada and LWT (ITV).
Robert has worked extensively for new writing and the promotion of new writers in television, radio, and theatre, and has recently been commissioned to write a play and a one man show for next year's Edinburgh Festival. This is Robert's first tour with Actors From The London Stage.
Anna Northam trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and then spent three years in Exeter playing such roles as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mary in Jane Austen's Persuasion, Elvira in Blythe Spirit, and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Other theatre credits include Magdalena in a new adaptation of The House of Bernarda Alba at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond; Alice in a No.1 National Tour of Hobson's Choice with Birmingham Repertory Theatre; Helga in The Kindertransport for The Octagon Theatre, Bolton; Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest for The Northcott Theatre, Exeter; and Queen Anne in The Three Musketeers for The Theatre Royal, York. Television credits include Ruth Fairfax in an episode of Midsomer Murders, and WPC Bethell in The Murder of Stephen Lawrence for Granada. The 2003 fall tour of Measure for Measure with AFTLS prompted Anna to leave England and study for her Master of Letters in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, focusing on original staging practices. Hamlet is her second tour with AFTLS.
Richard Stacey was a ski instructor, nightclub singer, stand-up comedian, semi-professional rugby player, builder, and teacher before he took the obvious step of going to drama school. He attended London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and since then has only looked back every once in a while. His theatre credits include Much Ado About Nothing with Sir Peter Hall, Macbeth at the Almeida with John Caird, Under the Whaleback at the Royal Court with Richard Wilson, Antigone at the Old Vic Theatre with Declan Donnellan, and even Robin Hood at the National Theatre. He has done the type of television work that all actors do, including a series called Keen Eddie for U.S. TV, which he is hoping to catch as a repeat somewhere on tour because he never saw it the first time around. He is in the new film version of Atonement and has also appeared in blockbusters like Evil Elvis. As a writer of screenplays, he was behind the enormously successful (in Singapore) Parasite, and he also writes educational materials for, among others, Oxford University Press. This is his first tour with Actors From The London Stage.
Terence Wilton is delighted to be making his fourth visit with AFTLS. His last appearance in the USA was as Prospero in The Tempest, and before that, in Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet.
Terry is grateful to William Shakespeare for a much-traveled career. As a young actor, he played Aumerle to Ian Mckellen's Richard the Second and Laertes with Derek Jacobi's Hamlet, in acclaimed world tours for Prospect at the Old Vic. These tours took him to exotic locations, such as China and Japan, castles and amphitheaters across the Mediterranean and Arabia (including the Sphinx in Cairo), and eventually, via Australia, to Elsinore Castle in Denmark. For the British Council, he toured the Middle and Far East as Petruchio in The Shrew with Bristol Old Vic, and he took over the role of Claudius for a world tour of the extraordinary Lyubimov production of Hamlet.
He has played a number of seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company: as Duke in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Posthumous in Cymbeline, Perkin in Perkin Warbeck. He also appeared in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Columbus, Julius Caesar, Henry IV part 1, Hamlet, Richard III, and Dr. Faustus for the RSC.
In the West End, he has played Valentine in Shaw's You Never Can Tell, Jason in Barney Simon's production of Medea, Octave in Court in the Act, and Robert de Montboissier in Abelard and Heloise. For Mike Alfred's Method and Madness company, he played Pastor Manders in Ghosts, Silas in Uncle Silas, Autolycus in A Winter's Tale, and Tournel in A Flea in Her Ear.
At Manchester's Royal Exchange, his favorite theatre in the round, Terry has appeared as Queequeg in Michael Eliot's famous Moby Dick, as Paul Verrall in Born Yesterday, Kent in King Lear, Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler, Harry in The Sanctuary Lamp, as Enobarbus in last year's Antony and Cleopatra, and in the premiere of many new plays.
Since then, Terry has appeared in a new Chris O'Connell play, Tall Phoenix. He has also played Mr. Badger in Wind in the Willows, Belarius in Cymbeline in Regent's Park Open Air, Walter in Miller's The Price, and Horatio Nelson in the Trafalgar 200 celebrations in Trafalgar Square.
His most recent television appearances have been as William of Tyre in The Crusades: Crescent & the Cross for the History Channel, and as Mr. Beech in The Forsyte Saga. Terry's film credits include Dear Rosie and Anne of the Thousand Days.