HomePedro The Great Pretender

Author: Miguel de Cervantes, in a new translation by Philip Osment

Director: Mike Alfreds

Royal Shakespeare Company : Spanish Golden Age Season

Synopsis

The play follows the fortunes of Pedro de Urdamales: an Odysseus of Spanish folktale, a dissembler and storyteller extraordinaire. Famed for his ingenuity and cunning, he is the epitome of the "picaro", a rogue who lives by his wits. Rather than a traditional, coherently-developing plot, the play presents a number of separate vignettes, the only continuity of which is the display of Pedro's resourceful wiliness.

Joseph Millson role

King and Beggar

In particular, Joseph Millson was outstandingly funny in his two roles as a scurrilous, blind con-artist who is outdone by Pedro, and as the king torn between his infatuation with a beautiful gypsy and his queen's uxorial jealousy. Curtain Up

Dates

9th - 30th Sept 2004 (Stratford)

17th Feb - 12th March 2005 (London)

30th - 31st Oct 2004 (Teatro Espagnol, Madrid, Spain)

18th - 26th November 2004 (The People's Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

Links

RSC

Playhouse Theatre

Dramatising the Spanish Golden Age Season (pdf)