SHAKESPEARE’S Globe is presenting Samuel Adamson’s hugely ambitious Gabriel, written in collaboration with two-time classical Brit Award-winner Alison Balsom, at its Bankside venue – from July 12 to August 18, 2013.
Part of this year’s Season of Plenty, Gabriel will be directed by Dominic Dromgoole and feature The English Concert with their fifteen-piece orchestra.
Intersecting plays, instrumentals and songs bring to life the music of Purcell and the rich pageant of court, tavern and theatre in late seventeenth-century London. As creative producer and star, Alison Balsom will explore the extraordinary expressiveness and versatility of the valveless Baroque trumpet in the unique acoustic space of the ‘wooden O’.
Alison Balsom is one of today’s most popular classical musicians. She is a two-time winner of the Classical BRIT Award for Best Female Performer and has also been awarded the 2006 Classical Brit Award for Young British Performer, the PPL Classical Award at the 2013 Silver Clef Awards and the Classic FM Listeners’ Choice Award at the 2006 Classic FM Gramophone Awards.
Her solo performance at the Last Night of the BBC Proms in 2009 attracted an estimated global television audience of 200 million, and she made her US television debut the following year on The Late Show with David Letterman. Balsom is currently Visiting Professor of Trumpet at the Guildhall School of Music.
Australian playwright Samuel Adamson first appeared on the London theatre scene with Clocks and Whistles at the Bush Theatre, directed by Dominic Dromgoole and starring Kate Beckinsale. The play won him a Pearson Writer’s Residency at the Bush Theatre and a Time Out Award, and was later produced in Germany and New York.
In 2007, he adapted Pedro Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning Spanish film All About My Mother at the Old Vic – the first time that the Spanish filmmaker had consented to his work being produced in English. His other previous plays include Southwark Fair and Mrs Affleck (National Theatre), A Chain Play (Almeida Theatre), Decade (Headlong), Grace Note (Old Vic/Peter Hall Company) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Theatre Royal Haymarket).
Adamson’s musical adaptation of The Light Princess, co-written with Tori Amos, premieres at the National Theatre in September 2013.
Created by Trevor Pinnock in 1973, the English Concert is one of the world’s finest chamber orchestras, with an unmatched global reputation for performing the music of the Baroque and Classical periods. They originally pioneered the use of authentic period instruments in the performance of early music – an approach that has since become wildly popular – and continue to combine historical accuracy with revelatory innovation. The English Concert has produced over 100 recordings and performed widely across the US and Europe.
Jessie Buckley will be playing the roles of Arabella and Kate, having received great critical acclaim for her turn as Miranda in Jeremy Herrin’s current Globe production of The Tempest. Buckley first shot to fame in 2008 as a finalist in the BBC TV series I’d Do Anything. She went on to play Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate Factory and made her West End debut when the production transferred to the Garrick Theatre. She graduated from RADA this year.
The cast will also include Jason Baughan, Sam Cox, Pip Donaghy, Peter Hamilton Dyer, Trevor Fox, James Garnon, Joshua James, William Mannering, Barbara Marten, Charlotte Mills, William Purefoy, Matthew Raymond, Richard Riddell, Sarah Sweeney, Ben Thompson and Amanda Wilkin.
The musicians are Alison Balsom, Sophie Barber, Mark Bennett, Joe Crouch, Tom Foster, Arngeir Hauksson, Louise Hogan, Robert Howes, Elizabeth MacCarthy, Peter MacCarthy, Abigail Newman, Walter Reiter, Zoe Shelvin, Martin Stadler and Adrian Woodward.
Gabriel is designed by Jonathan Fensom.
Tickets: £5 – £39 – available in person at the box office: Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm (8pm on performance days), Sundays 10am to 5pm (7pm on performance days); by calling +44 (0) 20 7401 9919; or online at www.shakespearesglobe.com/.