AMDG Productions give Shakespeare’s Cousin, Jonathan Moore’s play about the Elizabethan poet-priest Robert Southwell and the man sent to break him, its first performance at the White Bear Theatre on 10 November.
The White Bear Theatre in Kennington stages the world premiere of Shakespeare’s Cousin this November, a new play written and directed by Jonathan Moore for AMDG Productions. Previews are on Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 November, press night is Thursday 12 November at 7.30pm, and the run continues to Saturday 28 November 2026.
Moore’s subject is Robert Southwell, the Elizabethan poet who was also a Jesuit priest, and the interrogation that puts him in a room with Sir Richard Topcliffe, the man Elizabeth I relied on to extract confessions. The England around them is one of spies, informers and an invasion scare, with public executions at Tyburn: one Jesuit priest in three was arrested, tortured and put to death, and holding the wrong belief was punishment enough in itself.
Southwell was the most widely read poet of his generation and a cousin of Shakespeare, whose plays carry his influence, yet outside university English departments he is now barely known. Moore uses the interrogation as a way into the Reformation and what it left behind, from censorship and religious bigotry to xenophobia and the price an artist pays under a watchful state.
The play is a three-hander. Robin Kingsland plays Sir Richard Topcliffe, Danny Solomon plays Robert Southwell and Alex Townson plays Sir Oliver.
Moore is an actor, writer and director with 11 stage plays and seven opera libretti to his name, and a body of work staged in Britain and abroad, including at the Donmar Warehouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Almeida, the Royal Exchange Manchester, BAM in New York and the Munich Biennale. He co-wrote the opera Greek with Mark-Anthony Turnage and directed its first production, and his previous play, Inigo, is published by Aurora Metro Press, which will also publish Shakespeare’s Cousin.
Performances are Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm and the running time is two hours including an interval. Tickets are £23, or £18 for concessions. The White Bear Theatre is at 138 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4DJ.
