Bell Shakespeare’s 2025 season offers a blend of the familiar and the seldom seen to mark the company’s 35th anniversary – three plays sharing intersecting themes of conflict, power and politics: Coriolanus, Henry 5 and a national tour of Romeo & Juliet.

A Historic Return for Coriolanus

Bell Shakespeare’s Artistic Director Peter Evans will helm Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s lesser known but most powerful plays, set in the political cauldron of Ancient Rome. Hazem Shammas takes on the title role, that of a Roman general whose contempt for the people lead to his banishment. Furious, Coriolanus allies himself with a former enemy to take revenge on the city he once so zealously defended.

The production will play in traverse in the intimate setting of The Neilson Nutshell in Sydney, followed by a season at the Fairfax Studio in Melbourne. It will be the first time the company has performed the play publicly in three decades, since the British theatremaker Steven Berkoff directed John Bell as Coriolanus in 1996.

Coriolanus: Hazem Shammas. Photo supplied

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