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Dead Poets Live: Onlie Begetter - Shakespeare's Sonnets

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

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

Due to exceptional demand, we have released a limited number of standing tickets for both performances. Click here to book.

Featuring Monica Dolan, Angus Wright, Nat Segnit and Keri Mosuro.

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.

 

Nat Segnit

Nat Segnit is an author, critic and journalist. His novel Pub Walks in Underhill Country was published by Penguin and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize. His most recent book, Retreat, a non-fiction study of the impulse to step back from the world, was published by The Bodley Head in 2021. His short fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, 1843, the Spectator and the TLS. For BBC Radio 4 he has co-written and presented two series of mock documentaries, Strangers on Trains and Beautiful Dreamers, and made regular appearances on The Film Programme, Book at Bedtime and Radio 3’s The Essay.

 

Keri Mosuro

Keri is a Nigerian actor and writer, born in London and grew up in Kent. She trained at RADA, graduating from the BA Acting course in 2024. Before her degree she was a member of the first Old Vic Theatre Makers cohort, as well as the National Theatre’s Young Producer’s course, which strengthened her desire to make her own work. As a writer, she has a love for poetry, and is part of the Obsidian Foundation which champions the voices of Black poets globally.

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Additional Information

Safe Passage
Dead Poets Live donate all the proceeds from our shows to Safe Passage, a charity which helps unaccompanied child refugees and vulnerable adults in Europe find safe, legal routes to the UK. Safe Passage’s legal team works with families living in the UK who are trying to reunite with relatives that are asylum seekers in Europe and on dangerous journeys. The aim is for refugees to avoid falling into the hands of smugglers or risk life-threatening routes to Britain.

Only half a per cent (0.54%) of the UK’s total population is made up of asylum seekers and refugees, and when accounting for population size, the UK ranks 19th overall in Europe for asylum applications received. Those that do come to the UK do so for various reasons – many make the journey to reach family and friends, because of cultural ties, or through no choice of their own, because of the actions of traffickers. Most of the Ukrainians we have supported at Safe Passage wanted to come to the UK because they saw Britain as a welcoming country that respected human rights. However, the vast majority of even the small number who attempt to reach the UK end up in Calais and Dunkirk with no access to safe routes. Between 2010 and 2020, only 6% of unaccompanied children who received asylum in the UK arrived via a safe route. Since the Government closed the two major safe routes for unaccompanied children, 83% fewer refugees have arrived via a safe route in the 12 months to June 2023 compared to the previous year.

Two years since Kabul fell to the Taliban, and the Government is still failing to honour its commitments to help Afghans reach safety. Through our legal work, we have observed first-hand that the current schemes are too slow and too restrictive. Many at-risk Afghans have no way to reach safety in the UK, and families who were separated in the evacuation still have no way to reunite with their children and loved ones. Without functioning safe routes, more and more eligible Afghans have been left with no choice but to risk dangerous journeys to reach safety in the UK. To the end of August this year 4,080 Afghans crossed the Channel, compared to just 69 Afghans crossing the Channel in the whole of 2019. Currently, around 1 in 5 of all people crossing the Channel are from Afghanistan. To urgently prevent further loss of life and to honour these commitments, the Government must act now to provide safe routes and offer welcome and compassion to Afghans in need of safety.

We’re the only organisation working with children at risk on the ground in both the country they find themselves in and the country they wish to reach. This, combined with our high quality casework, is unique and has proven particularly effective at cracking open legal routes.

Our field teams help identify and support child refugees who are eligible for transfer and ensure this happens quickly and safely. Where there are unexpected delays we reassure the child and make sure they remain out of the hands of smugglers.

Our team attend the arrivals of child refugees we’ve helped reunite with family, to make sure they have a welcoming face when they arrive in their new home and restart their life in the UK. We also have a volunteer Community Mentoring programme that helps refugees settle by helping them register with a GP, sign up for school or other specialist organisations that may assist them with specific problems.’

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