With an audience including the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) will bring together acclaimed actors from David Suchet to Dame Judi Dench for a one-night extravaganza of Shakespeare-inspired works spanning genres from hip-hop to opera.
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Shakespeare Live! will be hosted by David Tennant at the RSC's theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The latest names to sign up to mark the Bard's death on April 23 include actors John Lithgow, Anthony Sher and Anne-Marie Duff, comedians Tim Minchin and Rufus Hound, and the cast of Horrible Histories, with music from The Shires and the Midlands Youth Jazz Orchestra.
Almost teary and a bit stuttery, Corden could only gush about how he was “overwhelmed” to be mentioned in the same breath as other nominees James Earl Jones, Frank Langella, John Lithgow and “my favourite actor in the world” Philip Seymour Hoffman. “To be on a list with you was enough,” he said, addressing the other actors in the audience.
His performance has been likened to Gwyneth Paltrow’s overwhelmingly gushy, weepy 1999 Oscar acceptance speech but actually Corden’s wasn’t an embarrassing, cringeworthy affair.
“My girlfriend Julia gave birth to our son five days before we started rehearsals,” Corden said as the cameras panned to the attractive blonde sitting in the auditorium. “She’s my baby mama and I can’t wait to marry her. Seriously, I would not be holding this if it wasn’t for her. She made me say ‘us’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ and I love her. Thank you very much.”
The speech was a far cry from the one he gave at the Baftas in 2008 when Corden – then riding high on the success of the BBC comedy series Gavin & Stacey – went on stage and complained that he shouldn’t have won two awards, he should have won three.
That was the old, arrogant Corden and the actor has already credited Julia, who has worked as a TV producer and for the charity Save The Children, for making him a better person. His Tony Award speech has clearly emphasised the point.
It’s also true that after he met Julia in 2010 his life took an upward swing. Before that, it had been a rather turbulent affair of highs and lows. As the son of Salvation Army parents Corden has said he “couldn’t have grown up in a more secure and lovely family” but he was always an attention-seeker and so when he scaled the heights of fame, it was like a dream come true.
