Shakespeare Globe

Helen

by Euripides in a new version by Frank McGuinness

Production now closed

**** 'One of the most topical and engaging plays on the London stage... Deborah Bruce’s production deftly combines ancient and modern, the serious and the frivolous, and the evening is powered by a terrific performance from Penny Downie as a tousled, flame-haired Helen... This rare revival of an undervalued classic proves the jewel in the Globe’s crown this season' Daily Telegraph
Full review

**** 'The new text by Frank McGuinness is sharp and staccato, with a real muscular vitality... The Globe fully restores the play's imperishable brilliance and surprise novelty value' The Independent

**** 'A gleefully cheeky translation by Frank McGuinness... There is a zest for love and life here that, speaking across thousands of years, is hard to resist' Financial Times

**** 'Shakespeare's Globe is one of the capital's biggest success stories... Tremendous performance by Penny Downie' Sunday Express

**** 'The bigness of the play’s emotions and warmth given full voice in the Globe’s cavernous space... First-rate performances, most notably from Penny Downie’s engaging Helen and Paul McGann’s intelligent and human Menelaus' thelondonpaper

'Penny Downie is outstanding as the flame-haired Helen' Time Out

'Frank McGuinness's roistering new version is passionate and fast-moving... Has plenty of knockabout but it also has an ethereal thread... Penny Downie's extraordinary Helen' Observer

'McGuinness' boisterous new version...Downie's performance gets the audience laughing with pleasure' Sunday Times

'Penny Downie moves nicely from conspiratorial allure to flailing eroticism, and Paul McGann’s Menelaus has an engaging directness' Evening Standard

'Bruce's flamboyant production takes its lead from Euripides' dramatic subversiveness... A boldly entertaining damnation of war's futility' Metro

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?

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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