Sunday, September 12, 2004

Welcome to Rose Rage
On a single day, Rose Rage captures all three parts of Henry VI in two performances of just over two hours each. It's an intense recipe for a history play that's anything but traditional cooked up by one of England's hottest directors. Award-winning British director Edward Hall has garnered international acclaim for his productions performed around the world, including at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Tokyo Globe.

Shakespeare's original Henry VI trilogy traces the monumental events surrounding the 15th-century collapse of England: from the untimely death of warrior-king Henry V, through the deterioration of his French conquests in the hands of his son Henry VI, the slow broiling of York's rebellion, and the eruption of the Wars of the Roses, one of England's bloodiest civil wars. With their vigorously carved text for Rose Rage, Hall and author Roger Warren have preserved the structure of the trilogy, but trimmed the fat, excising nearly 50 percent of Shakespeare's words. In exchange, they reveal the true meat of the three full-length plays, primed for their marinade of metaphorically violent staging. "

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