Liverpool based PurpleCoat have been successful in their bid for Arts Council Funding.
After seven years producing work with their adult and youth cast, staging productions in Liverpool and on tour across the U.K., they have been awarded a small amount of funding to allow them to continue. To celebrate, they return to Liverpool this Christmas with a double bill of ‘Shakespeare’s two greatest plays.’
Originally published by L.S. Media. July 11th 2012
L.S. Media Rating ****
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Julie Walters, Maxine Peake, Tom Georgeson, Simon Russell Beale, Alun Armstrong, Joe Armstrong, Harry Lloyd, Michelle Dockery, Robert Pugh.
If the first in the B.B.C.’s Hollow Crown adaptations of William Shakespeare’s history plays Richard II focused on the nature of chivalry in the time of noble kings, then the second, Henry IV, Part One focused on the story of what was too come. With an elderly Henry on the throne of England and with the playboy Prince of Wales taking up with thieves, robbers and undesirables in the taverns of Cheapside, it was more of an eye on how the boy, one of the best loved characters in Shakespeare and royal history, became the man he was to become.