Dead Poets Live: Onlie Begetter - Shakespeare's Sonnets

Dead Poets Live presents a dramatised reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Featuring Monica Dolan and Angus Wright. Further casting to be announced.

For more than 150 years following their publication, Shakespeare’s Sonnets lay uncontested, largely unread. The details of the love story that they seem to tell followed them into obscurity, but remained there, so that when they finally re-emerged, in 1780, as literary biography was booming, the Sonnets appeared as a tantalising enigma. ‘With this key’, as Wordsworth said, ‘Shakespeare unlocked his heart’. As a record of feeling Shakespeare’s Sonnets remain shockingly, radically intimate, perhaps the most scrupulous and passionate autobiographical sequence ever written. But as a record of fact they continue to elude, perplex and ruin even the soundest minds. Who is the ‘Mr W. H.’ to whom the 1609 Sonnets were dedicated? Who is the Friend the sonnets themselves address? Are they one and the same? Is he the ‘onlie begetter’ of the dedication? Or is the ‘onlie begetter’ someone else? Is it Shakespeare? Who is the ‘Dark Woman’, and what exactly is her relation to the ‘Friend’? And who is the ‘Rival Poet’? What happens in the sonnets? Does it happen in the right order? And are we really as far above these questions as we pretend to be?

Tracing and retracing the riddles of the sonnets where others have followed and fallen before, Dead Poets Live returns to The Coronet Theatre to present this great sequence in all its glory.

Dead Poets Live have established a cult following at The Coronet Theatre for their dramatised readings of classic poetry, attracting some of Britain’s finest actors including Charlotte Rampling, Miranda Richardson and Tom Hiddleston. All proceeds from their evenings go to the charity Safe Passage. Dead Poets Live is devised and supported by The TS Eliot Foundation.

Monica Dolan

Monica Dolan is a BAFTA and Olivier Award winning actor whose work spans television, film and stage.

Television highlights include her portrayal of ‘Ann Branson’ in Sherwood II, ‘Jo Hamilton’ in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Appropriate Adult (for which she won the BAFTA), The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, playing the role of ‘Anne Darwin’, My Name is Leon, Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, Stephen Frears’ A Very English Scandal (BAFTA nomination Best Supporting Actress), Black Mirror, The Witness for the Prosecution, The Casual Vacancy and W1A. Her feature films include Cyrano, Days of the Bagnold Summer, The Dig, Official Secrets, Eye in the Sky, The Arbor, Pride, and Carol Morley’s The Falling and Typist Artist Pirate King (now on Netflix). Onstage Monica played the lead in Doubt at Chichester Festival Theatre, to critical acclaim. Before that she revived her performance in The Shrine for the Talking Heads Series at The Bridge. Other theatre work includes Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ critically acclaimed Appropriate at the Donmar, Plaques and Tangles for the Royal Court, and Ivo van Hove’s production of All About Eve (for which she won an Olivier Award). Monica also wrote and starred in the award winning play The B*easts which transferred to London following a hit run at the Edinburgh Festival.

Angus Wright

Angus Wright, returning for Dead Poets Live after his performance in Eugene Onegin, has appeared across stage, television and film. His many television credits include George in the Channel 4 series Flowers, Angus in Peep Show, Sir David Graham in Mary & George and previously The Capture, The Witchfinder, His Dark Materials, Succession, Endeavour, Cursed and The Crown among others. Theatre credits include Nachtland (Young Vic), Hamlet, Oresteia (Almeida & West End), 12th Night, Richard III (Globe/Broadway), The Master and Margarita (Complicite).

Film credits includes: The Bank of Dave, See How They Run, Catherine Called Birdy, The Courier, Official Secrets.