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Globe boss Michelle Terry has been upfront about the fact that the outdoor summer programming at the recreated Bankside theatre has been fairly safe in the post-pandemic years. The need to get bums on seats (or standing in the yard) has led to a heavy-on-the-bangers last four summers of programming that has left Shakespeare’s obscurities mostly relegated to the smaller indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
There are a couple of blockbuster classics in the 2025 outdoor programme, announced today (February 4). But it’s also the wildest open air Globe bill in years, with a couple of proper Shakespearean obscurities and the first ever outdoor revival of a classic play not by the big man Willy S.
The season kicks off two days after the Bard’s birthday on April 25 with associate director Sean Holmes helming an intriguing Wild West-set take on Romeo & Juliet (Apr 25-Aug 2) that’ll star up-and-coming youngsters Abdul Sessay and Lola Shalam as the star cross’d lovers.
The next play in the season will be Ola Ince’s take on Arthur Miller’s witch hunt allegory classic The Crucible (May 8-Jul 12) which is, remarkably, the first time a classic play not by Shakespeare has been revived outside at the Globe, where the bill has typically been the Bard plus a bit of new writing. Michelle Terry has shown a willingness to programme canonical European classics indoors, with Ibsen and Chekhov having recently made their debuts, but I believe Miller would be the first major US dramatist revived at the theatre. Set less than a century after Shakespeare’s death, The Crucible feels like an apt choice for the theatre, and will doubtless prove a decent draw too.
Holmes will then direct the first of the season’s curios: The Merry Wives of Windsor (Jul 4-Sep 20) is the preposterous comedy spin-off from Henry IV that offered a slightly iffy new series of adventures to Shakespeare’s great comedy creation Sir John Falstaff (who technically died in Henry IV Part 2 but whatever).
Next up is the other ‘big’ show of the season – Robin Belfield (who directed last year’s new play Princess Essex) will take on the beloved mistaken identity comedy Twelfth Night (Aug 8-Oct 25) in the play’s second revival since the pandemic.
Finally, a proper rarity – there hasn’t been an in house production of Trojan war epic Troilus and Cressida (Sep 26-Oct 26) since 2009 (a Maori production did a short stint here in 2012 as part of that year’s Globe to Globe Festival). Now it makes its debut in the Terry era, directed by longterm RSC associate Owen Horsely on his Globe debut.
That’s the main season. There are also a couple of bonus fun bits. On Sunday Sep 14, Blanche McIntye will direct a TBA celebrity cast in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that will have been entirely rehearsed and devised on that day (she did the same with a Twelfth Night last year). Before that, the indoor Sam Wanamaker will keep up its recent tradition of staging a summer kids’ show, with a reprise for 2023’s light-hearted Macbeth spin-off Rough Magic (Jul 19-Aug 23). And that’s your lot!
The 2025 Shakespeare’s Globe summer season will go on public sale February 25.
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