A play for today – Set in Elizabethan England
White Bear Theatre will premiere Shakespeare’s Cousin, a play by actor, writer and director Jonathan Moore exploring the life of poet and Jesuit priest Robert Southwell, and the interrogation that brings him face to face with Sir Richard Topcliffe, Queen Elizabeth I’s torturer of choice.
The Reformation. Spies. Intrigue. The Armada at the door. Brutal torture of those perceived to be enemies of the state at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I.
One in three Jesuit priests are arrested, tortured and executed in front of baying mobs at Tyburn Tree. Paranoia grips the land. Thought crimes are brutally punished.
Into this dangerous, tense world steps young radical genius Robert Southwell. The most celebrated poet of his age, he was the favourite of his cousin, Shakespeare, whose plays are influenced by his work.
But outside the world of literary studies and academia, he is now largely forgotten. Why? Southwell was both a poet of genius and the most subversive of things one could be at the time: a Jesuit priest.
The interrogation of Southwell by Topcliffe is the lens through which Moore examines the ideas and wider impact of the Reformation, whose cultural and political effects still shape our world today.
With contemporary resonances including censorship, religious bigotry, cancel culture, xenophobia and the cost of being an artist at a time of state oppression, Shakespeare’s Cousin is very much a play for today.
Cast: Robin Kingsland as Sir Richard Topcliffe, Danny Solomon as Robert Southwell and Alex Townson as Sir Oliver. Directed by Jonathan Moore.
White Bear, 138 Kennington Park Rd, London SE11 4DJ.
Booking and full details: https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/shakespeare’s-cousin
