Mark Rylance and André Holland to star in ‘Othello’ at the Globe

It’s been a bumpy few years for Shakespeare’s Globe, but while we’re not pretending that the ousting of soon-to-depart artistic director Emma Rice was in any way a good thing, there’s no point in treating her successor Michelle Terry with anything but an open mind.

We were promised an actor-centric inaugural season, and we’ve certainly got one, with a seriously massive new production of ‘Othello’, starring US actor André Holland (‘Selma’, ‘Moonlight’) as the eponymous doomed Moorish general, and the great former Globe boss Mark Rylance as his scheming comrade Iago. The production is directed by Rylance’s wife Claire van Kampen and will run from July 20-October 13.

Elsewhere it’s a bustling season, with a rep company of actors entitled The Globe Ensemble and featuring Michelle Terry herself performing in ‘As You Like It’ and, intriguingly, ‘Hamlet’ – there’s no word on exactly who’s playing who, though all eyes are surely on Terry and whether or not she will play the Danish prince. They’ll run from the start of the season until August 26. We’ve also got Barrie Rutter tackling the rarely-performed ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’ (May 25-June 30) and ‘The Winter’s Tale’ directed by Blanche McIntyre (June 22-October 14). 

There’ll be new writing too – ‘Emilia’ by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (August 10-September 1), about ‘the dark lady of the sonnets’, and ‘Eyam’ by Matt Hartley (September 15-October 13), about a Derbyshire village struck down by plague in 1665.

Tickets go on sale at 10am, on Mon Jan 29.