This brilliant, award-winning play imagines Queen Elizabeth spending the eve of her lover’s execution in the company of William Shakespeare and his players. Seeking distraction from her grief, she watches Much Ado About Nothing and afterward, banters with Ned, the actor who played Beatrice, about his playing a woman, and her playing a man. Meanwhile, Shakespeare is writing a new play called Antony and Cleopatra—about a Queen’s tragic affair with her lover—which Elizabeth finds suspiciously familiar.

Chris starred as Ned Lowenscroft, Shakespeare’s great interpreter of women and a Beatrice for the ages.