King of Shadows

The heady thrill of acting at Shakespeare's original Globe Theater. The ripe smell of the groundlings crowded in a mob below the stage. The exhilaration of meeting the devoted Queen Elizabeth behind the scenes. Nat Field can barely imagine how that all might feel as he prepares to accompany his director to London to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at London's modern Globe reproduction theater. Jim Dale, himself a Shakespearean actor, and now familiar to many as the versatile reader of the Harry Potter titles, reads King of Shadows forcefully, with the intensity demanded by a story that employs bubonic plague as a time-travel device to transport a contemporary boy to 1599. Dale's accent, which leans slightly toward a drawl when Nat is speaking, is, nevertheless, predominantly British, and works less effectively for American secondary characters, though superbly for Londoners. T.B. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

June 18, 2001
"Cooper brilliantly weaves past and present together, using London's Globe Theatre as a backdrop, to demonstrate the timelessness of Shakespeare's works and the theater at large," said PW
in a boxed review. Ages 10-14.

This fully dramatized production tells the story of Nat Turner, who's been selected to travel to England to perform A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at the Globe theater. Nat falls ill and wakes to find himself somehow transported back to Shakespeare's time and to the role of Puck. This production, obviously geared toward educators, includes an author overview, section on Elizabethan vocabulary, footnotes, and questions for discussion. Shakespeare would have loved the concept (a play within a play!), but it's hard to actually listen without the visuals. Younger listeners especially will need to be very focused and to take advantage of the accompanying materials to avoid confusion. That said, the production is an engaging idea, carefully conceived and executed. J.C.G. 2006 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine