The Cordelia Dream Tickets

The Royal Shakespeare Company presents The Cordelia Dream at the Wilton’s Music Hall in East London. The new play is the second that is being housed in the atmospheric venue after the previous The Tragedy Of Thomas Hobbes by Adrian Shaplin. It started its run on 11th December 2008 and will continue into the New Year.

The Cordelia Dream focuses its attention on two unnamed characters. One is an 80 year old composer who lives in a tiny flat with hardly any room for possessions (meaning he sleeps on his piano). In walks a girl, she is much younger than him and is also a composer, though much more successful than he was. We learn that they are father and daughter and the old man is in fact jealous of her success, blaming it for his stifled creativity. The play has echoes of King Lear as the girl reveals that she has had a dream in which she was Cordelia holding the dying old man, who was Lear, in his arms. This has scared her and so she wants to make things right between them. Though they are rivals, they must put aside their differences and discuss just what it is they can do settle their relationship.

Written by Award-winning Irish playwright Marina Carr, The Cordelia Dream promises to be a dramatic look at two artists as the issue of death is dealt with in brutal terms. The issue of death is something that features heavily in the work of Carr as well as supernatural elements, with her previous work including The Mai (winner of the Best New Play at the Dublin Theatre Festival), By the Bog of Cats (starring Holly Hunter) in London’s West End and Woman and Scarecrow with Fiona Shaw at the Royal Court Theatre.

The girl who imagines herself as Cordelia is played by Michelle Gomez, best known for starring in the hit Channel 4 comedy Green Wing. Her other work includes The Acid House, Channel 4’s The Book Group and The Gunslingers Revenge alongside Harvey Keitel. For the stage she recently starred in another RSC production in the form of The Taming Of The Shrew at the Courtyard Theatre.

Playing the man is David Hargreaves, who also appeared in the recent The Taming Of The Shrew. Before this he appeared in King Lear as Gloucester.

The Cordelia Dream is directed by Selina Cartmell with design by Giles Cadle and lighting by Matthew Richardson. It is at Wilton’s Music Hall from Thursday 11th December 2008, currently booking until Saturday 10th January 2009.