Royal Shakespeare Company regular John Light will lead the cast of Trevor Griffiths’s new play A New World: A Life Of Thomas Paine when it opens at Shakespeare’s Globe in September.
Light, playing the eponymous hero who was key to both the American and French revolutions, is joined by many of the cast of current Globe production As You Like It. Michael Benz, Philip Bird, Sophie Duval, Peter Gale, Gregory Gudgeon, Brendan Hughes, Sean Kearns, Jack Laskey, Trevor Martin, Jamie Parker, Laura Rogers, Dominic Rowan, Ewart James Walters and Jade Williams are all castmates in Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy. Daniel Anthony, Keith Bartlett, James Garnon, Julia Reinstein and Alix Riemer complete the cast.
Light, who is married to Canadian actress Neve Campbell, was recently seen at London’s Bush theatre in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s second play Apologia. His credits for the RSC include Julius Caesar, The Tempest and The Seagull, and he has appeared at the National Theatre in The Night Season. Among Light’s screen credits are the films Partition, Dresden and The Lion In Winter.
The world premiere of A New World: A Life Of Thomas Paine marks the culmination of 20 years of research by playwright Griffiths. It tells the story of The Rights Of Man author Paine, an English radical at the beating heart of a late 18th century world aching for change.
A New World: A Life Of Thomas Paine is the penultimate production in Shakespeare’s Globe’s Young Hearts season which also includes Romeo And Juliet, The Frontline, As You Like It, Troilus And Cressida, Helen and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
MA
Light illuminates Globe’s New World
First Published 23 July 2009, Last Updated 23 July 2009