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Director Kenneth Branagh reunites the stars of his celebrated Cinderella, Lily James (Downton Abbey) and Richard Madden, to play Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers.
Reuniting the stars of his celebrated film Cinderella, Kenneth Branagh directs Lily James (Downton Abbey) and Richard Madden as theater’s most famous star-crossed lovers. This was the first Shakespeare play Branagh directed and his new production promises a passionate, modern take on this tragedy of forbidden love.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffick of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (Act I, Scene 1)
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