About: Forgotten Classics: Gallathea

Sunday 13 May 2007 – 8pm (one performance only)

‘Gallathea’ – by John Lyly – written and last performed in London in 1594
Directed by Tom Littler – whose 20+ directing credits include associate directing on the current West End revival of ‘Treats’ with Billie Piper.

A blockbuster hit in its own time, Gallathea is the source for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night: a comic drama of sexual identity and confusion. When Poseidon, god of the sea, demands his annual sacrifice, the two maidens chosen for this fate escape into the wood – but one of the girls is disguised as a young man... One of the outstanding comedies of the age.

Gallathea features highly talented rising stars, Charlie Covell and Mary Nighy.
It is the third in Primavera’s ‘Forgotten Classics’ series of six one-off rehearsed readings of plays you’ve never seen being staged at The King’s Head Theatre.

Primavera’s ‘Forgotten Classics’ series
The series started with Lord Byron’s ‘Manfred’ and Virginia Woolfe’s ‘Freshwater’. It continues with ‘Gallathea’, then:

‘No Thoroughfare’ by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins – written 1866, last performed 1904
- on at The King’s Head Theatre Sunday 3 June

‘Mariam’ by Elizabeth Cary – written 1613
- world premiere at The King’s Head Theatre Sunday 22 July

‘Porcelain and Pink’, and other one-act comedies by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams – written 1922-1940
- British premieres at The King’s Head Theatre Sunday 12 August

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