Fri 6:40 PM Ashland Street Cinema Sat 6:40 PM Ashland Street Cinema
Synopsis
What really happened during Shakespeare’s “lost years”? When terrible lute player and general layabout Bill Shakespeare leaves his home and family behind to follow his dream of becoming a playwright in London, he finds himself caught up with murderous kings, foreign spies, lost loves, and a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth in this Monty-Pythonesque British romp. Can one man prove the quill is mightier than the sword? With a cast of six actors playing forty roles, this comic re-envisioning of Shakespeare’s life will amuse the whole family.
Director’s Statement: Richard Bracewell
I was in Berlin with my brother, where they were premiering Anonymous, the Roland Emmerich film about the conspiracy theory that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. I thought, “There’s a comedy in here somewhere.” I had already been thinking, “Who is the most famous historical figure that I could do a film about?” I knew I couldn’t do anything Roman, or King Arthur, because Monty Python had done them. I didn’t want to do Winston Churchill, because that had been done quite recently. Shakespeare is the obvious famous Briton who is recognized worldwide. And the premise of Anonymous was that there was this gap in Shakespeare’s life about which scholars argue even now. That was a gift to someone writing a comedy — a blank period that you could basically fill with whatever you wanted. Who’s to say Shakespeare wasn’t a lute rock star?
