Venus and Adonis

Following its critically acclaimed cinematic debut in 2020, Sport for Jove and Seymour Centre will present the world premiere of Damien Ryan’s new play Venus and Adonis, reframing the extraordinary vision of Shakespeare’s most important work of poetry, on at the Seymour Centre from the 29 September to 21 October. 

It’s 1593. The plague has hit London. Theatres are closed, players out of work, houses bolted, people terrified by the touch of another’s skin, the breath of another’s air. 

Shakespeare, syphilitic and dangerously bored, publishes a scandalous response to the pestilence – an epic work about the very things lost to us, like intimacy, identity, and the erotic freedom of touch.

The brainchild of writer and director Damien Ryan, Venus and Adonis “bends history” (SMH) and follows the story of Shakespeare’s most significant rival and rumoured mistress, Aemilia Lanyer. Cast as a “libidinous Venus” in Ryan’s play within a play, Lanyer’s tale is a masterful work about the need to love, the right to speak, and the power of the printed word.