ACTOR Tom Burke, best known for playing Cormoran Strike in the hit BBC series, arrives at Nuffield Southampton Theatres City (NST City) with a major new revival of Schiller’s Don Carlos from 23 October to 3 November.

This Nuffield Southampton Theatres (NST) co-production marks the first venture of Ara, a new company set up by Burke and Israeli theatre director, Gadi Roll, to offer non-naturalistic stagings of classic plays.

Don Carlos reunites Burke and Roll following their previous collaboration on Don Juan Comes Back From the War at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. The play is a magnificent tale of passion and power set against the chilling backdrop of the bloody and ruthless Spanish Inquisition.

Don Carlos is torn apart when his tyrannical father King Philip II seals a peace deal by marrying French noble Elizabeth de Valois, the love of Carlos’ life. The heartbroken heir turns for help to his closest friend, Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa, a champion of the oppressed, who questions the monarch’s iron rule and becomes an unlikely power broker in the duplicitous court.

Written just two years before the French Revolution, Schiller’s Don Carlos is a man caught at the intersection of passion and politics: smitten by his stepmother and seduced by Posa’s dangerous vision of freedom. The chilling work is full of Shakespearean echoes and its themes of justice and equality; freedom of expression and conscience; religious bigotry and state persecution are as relevant today as ever.

Tom Burke said, “It is a classical text but a contemporary production. I find that the play is very relevant to the condition of human society, to where it is going, and there are very important things we should see and hear”

We are not interested in giving an historical exposé on the Spanish Inquisition as we are in showing a world which is very oppressed. “

Director Gadi Roll brings his trademark dynamic imagery and haunting soundscapes to Schiller’s masterpiece.

Gadi Roll said, “This is a play for our times. It mercilessly and sensationally depicts an extreme world of state power and corruption, but at its heart are some of the greatest heroes ever written.”

Don Carlos is a Nuffield Southampton Theatres co-production with Exeter Northcott and Rose Theatre Kingston. Gadi Roll directs Tom Burke (Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa), Alexandra Dowling (Eboli), Darrell D’Silva (Philip), Kelly Gough (Elizabeth) known to Southampton audiences as Blanche Dubois in NST’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Jason Morell (Domingo), Vinta Morgan (Alba), Samuel Valentine (Don Carlos), Stephen Ventura (Lerma) Flip Webster (Duchess), with Alexander Allin, Dan Ball, Guy Dennys and Euan Shanahan.

Tickets start from £10 and are available from the Box Office 023 80671771 or online at nstheatres.co.uk