Shakespeare Globe

Helen

by Euripides in a new version by Frank McGuinness

World Premiere
2 - 23 August

Love and loss

Seven years have passed since the end of the Trojan War and Menelaus, King of Sparta and husband to Helen, is making his slow and painful way home. When his ship is wrecked on the coast of Egypt he stumbles upon what seems to be his wife lingering outside the royal palace. But if this is the real Helen, who was the beautiful woman stolen by Paris, for whom all Greece took up arms? Did Troy fall for nothing? Has it all been some god’s idea of a joke?

The renowned playwright Frank McGuinness (Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me) follows his acclaimed version of Oedipus at the National Theatre with a funny and sparkling treatment of Euripides’ strange, comic, fairy tale-like romance – the Globe’s first excursion into full-scale Greek drama.

Penny Downie most recently appeared as Gertrude in Hamlet and Penelope in The Penelopiad for the RSC. Paul McGann is best known for the film Withnail and I and his theatre work includes Mourning Becomes Electra (National Theatre).

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