Project to build Elizabethan-style theatre

Sir Ken Dodd has become a patron of Shakespeare North. 

The 330-seat theatre will be built to 1629 designs on the site of an  Elizabethan playhouse in Prescot, Merseyside, which is thought to have had connections with Shakespeare.

Liverpudlian Dodd, who made his Shakespearean acting debut as Malvolio  in Twelfth Night at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1971, said: ‘All the world’s a stage – and I am delighted to be a patron of this wonderful project’

Sir Ken’s film debut was as Yorick in Kenneth Branagh’s 1997 version of Hamlet. and in 2005 he addressed an audience in Stratford-upon-Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company on Shakespeare and Humour. Given his live shows famously last up to five hours, the talk was appropriately titled ‘A fellow of infinite jest’.

Construction in is due to start on Shakespeare North in 2018.

Published: 25 May 2017