Summer 2019's a curiously nautical one in Cohenworld. The great man can currently be found playing Egeon, a luckless merchant sailing the seven seas (well, the Med, at least) in search of his offspring, in the Petersfield Shakespeare Festival production of The Comedy of Errors. Under the expert direction of Becky Hope-Palmer, the open-air extravaganza runs till 22nd July. Next up, for one night only, Robert's essaying the role of Captain Ahab in a reading of Moby Dick: Rehearsed, Orson Welles' stage adaptation of the Herman Melville whale-hunting classic. That's happening as part of A Night of Pure Moby Dickery, at the Tin Tabernacle in London, on Saturday 27th July. And finally, from 12th-17th August, at the Camden Fringe, he reprises the role of salty sea-dog Skeres in The Geminus, a Joseph Conrad adaptation first seen at the Brighton Fringe. Tickets and further details here.
On Saturday 6th April, Robert Linc'd up with Emerge Boston, an open-air celebration of all things Shakespearean, held at Central Park in Boston. The Cohenian contribution, Something Rotten: In Search of Claudius, comprised excerpts from Hamlet paraquel Something Rotten, as well as a little bit from Shakespeare's original...
MEANWHILE IN COVENTRY...
Short film Autumn Patrol, starring Ross Gurney-Randall as Quint the traffic warden, was nominated for a Driver Award for Best Short at the Coventry Film Festival. It didn't win – but, as they always claim, it's nice to be nominated.
Sheila Llewellyn’s The Papakh Hat is a story of love, fear and loss on the eve of the Iranian revolution. It was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. Robert Cohen’s reading, recorded for Costa by the Spoken Ink company, can now be heard here.
The Ragged Regiment is a darkly comic stage play depicting internecine warfare backstage at a stuffed-animal museum in Cromer. It won the 2014 Constance Cox Playwriting Prize. A filmed extract from the play can be seen on Youtube: click on the picture to eavesdrop on an awkward breakfast conversation between Angie (Jenny Rowe) and her sister Trinity (Erica Smith), in whose boyfriend Noah she has taken an unacceptable level of interest.