The Washington Stage Guild brings its 40th season to a close with a new, slimmed-down adaptation of Caesar & Cleopatra, a rarely produced play by George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Artistic Director/Founding Company Member Bill Largess. The production features 4-time Helen Hayes Award nominee Craig Wallace (Ford’s Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, Shakespeare Theatre’s Lear and Our Town) as Caesar and Hannah Taylor (Stage Guild’s Faithless, 1st Stage’s Birthday Candles) as Cleopatra. Performances begin April 9 – 11 with four Pay-What-You-Can previews and run until May 3, 2026 at the Washington Stage Guild’s home, The Undercroft Theatre in the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, NW.
ABOUT THE PLAY:
Caesar and Cleopatra come to Stage Guild for the first time!
Under an Egyptian moon, the aging Julius Caesar meets teenage Cleopatra by chance one night. With turmoil afoot as Cleopatra and her younger brother vie for the throne, Caesar helps the young queen grow into a great ruler favoring wisdom, honor, and clemency. With the palace under siege by insurgents, Caesar might not be able to keep the country together or even escape alive – let alone manage the headstrong Cleopatra. DC’s premiere producer of Shaw stages this slimmed-down version (by artistic director Bill Largess), a riveting exploration of power, politics, vengeance, and mercy.
“As we wind up our 40th season, we naturally have looked back on what we’ve accomplished, and one of our proudest achievements is having brought the many works of George Bernard Shaw, both well and lesser known, to an appreciative audience,” shares adaptor and director Bill Largess. “Several had remained challenges, though, with demands too great for our resources. One of these was Shaw’s huge, sprawling historical epic play about Julius Caesar’s excursion into Egypt. At its heart is a personal story of Cleopatra’s learning to be a queen, so with caution, I pared the cast and eliminated subplots to focus on their interactions, an action I only hope Shaw would have approved, as it puts his great play, at least in part, back on the stage, as Caesar & Cleopatra.”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist. His influence on Western theater, culture, and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Washington Stage Guild has produced 32 of Shaw’s plays (including several one-act plays).
ABOUT THE TEAM
The cast of Caesar & Cleopatra includes Craig Wallace and Hannah Taylor with Laura Giannarelli, Matty Griffiths, Ryan Michael Neely, Chris Stinson with Dylan Arredondo as understudy.
Craig Wallace (Caesar) is excited to make his Washington Stage Guild debut. He has appeared in multiple productions in The Washington DC area including Folger Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Signature Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, Everyman Theatre, Studio Theatre, Mosaic Theatre, Round House Theatre, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre. His regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Hangar Theatre, among others. Craig holds a BFA from Howard University, an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, and has studied at the Royal National Theatre in London. He has received four Helen Hayes Awards nominations.
Hannah Taylor (Cleopatra) is a DMV-based actress who is thrilled to be returning to Washington Stage Guild! Recent credits include Between Riverside and Crazy, Birthday Candles, and The Piano Lesson (1st Stage) Not Your Mother’s Goose! (Adventure Theater), Faithless (Washington Stage Guild), Hand to God (Keegan Theatre), Paper Dreams, and The Last Martyr (Imagination Stage), Klecksography “Vox Populi” (Rorschach Theatre).
Laura Giannarelli (Ftatateeta; Assistant Director) is thrilled to be a part of this exciting new adaptation of Shaw’s iconic play. Most recently, she played Valeria Hunter in all three of Patricia Milton’s Victorian Ladies mysteries here at The Guild. A founding member of the company, Laura, has appeared in more than 40 Stage Guild productions over the past three decades, beginning with Chekhov in Yalta in our inaugural season. She has also acted with many other area theaters over the years: Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre, Olney Theatre, The Kennedy Center (Theatre for Young Audiences), GALA Hispanic Theatre, Theater J, Studio Theatre, Round House Theatre, Wayside Theatre in Virginia, and Annapolis Shakespeare Company, among others. She also directs and helmed last season’s Shaw’s Shorts and the 2023-24 season opener, Dorothy’s Dictionary by E.M. Lewis, among others. A narrator since 1979 for the Library of Congress’ “Talking Books for the Blind” Program, Laura has recorded over 1400 books.
Matty Griffiths (Rufio) is a freelance actor and director and former Executive Director/Founder of City Artistic Partnerships. He recently performed in Stage Guild’s Happy Days and was last seen with them in Endgame in 2023. Other recent roles include Angus in Morning After Grace by Carey Crim (The Anacostia Arts Center), Jack Warner in Gwen & Ida (Nu Sass), Hemingway in Clothes for a Summer Hotel (Rainbow Theatre Project), Boolie in Driving Miss Daisy (Anacostia Playhouse), Greg/Kelly in Flood City (Theater Alliance), Rabbi Barry in Constructive Fictions (Capital Fringe), and Janitor in Dry Land (Forum Theatre).
Ryan Michael Neely (Pothinus/Sentinel) is thrilled to return to Washington Stage Guild. DC credits include The One Good Thing (Washington Stage Guild), the world premiere of Ken Ludwig’s Death on the Nile (Dir: Hana S. Sharif) at Arena Stage, King Lear (with Patrick Page), Much Ado About Nothing (dir. Simon Godwin), Our Town, and The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare Theatre Company). Other regional credits include the title role in Hamlet (StoryTellers Theater), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival), East of Heart Mountain (Dir. Giovanna Sardelli), House for Sale (Dir. Daniel Fish) and Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe, UK), among others. New York credits include Hamlet (L+F), Romeo and Juliet (Secret Theater), and The Book of Z…(Manhattan Rep).
Chris Stinson (Apollodorus) is honored to be returning to the Washington Stage Guild this season, having previously appeared as Tommy in The One Good Thing, Or ‘Are Ya Patrick Swayze? At WSG, he was also in 2022’s Memoirs of a Forgotten Man & 2015’s Pen. Select DC-area credits include: A Christmas Carol and One Destiny at Ford’s Theatre, Shear Madness and Digging Up Dessa at The Kennedy Center, Another Way Home at Theater J, The Diary of Anne Frank at Olney Theatre, Failure: A Love Story (Helen Hayes nom.) at The Hub Theatre, The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Constellation Theatre. Other: The Angel Next Door and Clue: On Stage at Meadow Brook Theatre. TV credits: Legends & Lies: The Civil War; CopyCat Killers; Evil Kin. Chris’s voice can also be heard in numerous audiobook titles by Graphic Audio.
Dylan Arredondo’s (Apollodorus understudy) DC credits include Ford’s Theatre: Sister Act; Theater J: An Enemy of the People; Signature Theatre: A Funny Thing…Forum, Daphne’s Dive; Round House: Quixote Nuevo; 1st Stage: Between Riverside & Crazy, Birthday Candles, The Nance; Rep Stage: The Glass Menagerie; Olney Theatre Center: Lend Me a Soprano, Fiddler on the Roof, Beauty & the Beast, The Great Gatsby, Alice in Wonderland, Othello; Kennedy Center: The Mortification of Fovea Munson; Constellation: School for Lies, White Snake; Spooky Action: Frontières Sans Frontières, Lady…Falling Flowers. His directing credits include NextStop: Dream Hou$e; Flying V: Astro Boy & the God of Comics (Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction & six nominations).
Caesar & Cleopatra is adapted and directed by Bill Largess, a founding member of WSG and the current Artistic Director. His WSG acting credits include Endgame, Man & Superman, his own adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, as director, Murder in The Cathedral and Pygmalion, performing in an evening of Beckett plays at the 2000 International Beckett Festival, and appearing at nearly every DC-area theater company, as well as nationally. His work has been nominated five times for Helen Hayes Awards.
The production team includes Jonathan Dahm Robertson (Scenic Design), Marianne Meadows (Lighting Design), Elizabeth Morton (Costume Design), Thom J. Woodward (Sound Design), Zhy Strowbridge (Assistant Sound Designer), Bess Kaye (Fight Choreographer), Laura Giannarelli (Assistant Director), Shannon Lewis (Production Stage Manager), and Luca Maggs (Assistant Stage Manager).
DATES & TICKETS
Caesar & Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw runs April 9 to May 3, 2026 at the Undercroft Theatre at the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC. Performances are Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2:30pm & 8pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm. All tickets are General Admission and are $60. Student Admission is half-price with a valid Student ID. Senior Citizens 65 years and up get $10 OFF General Admission Prices. Groups of 10 or more get half-price tickets. Purchase tickets online.
SPECIAL OFFERS
Special “Sweet 16” Discounted Tickets – Stage Guild is offering a limited number of 16 tickets at discounted price of $16 for each performance from Sun, April 12 thru Sun, May 3. Use the code SWEET16 (Pay-What-You-Can previews excluded as they are already discounted). Purchase at https://stageguild.org/buy-tickets/
The run begins with four Pay-What-You-Can performances Thursday, April 9 at 7:30pm, Friday, April 10 at 8pm, and Saturday, April 11 at 2:30pm & 8pm. Pay What You Can tickets can be purchased for any cash price or with a credit card at the door beginning one hour prior to curtain.
ABOUT WASHINGTON STAGE GUILD
Founded in 1986 by a professional company of theater artists dedicated to producing literate, challenging works in a collegial and supportive atmosphere, the Washington Stage Guild quickly established itself as an indispensable component of the DC-area theater scene; recognized as early as the end of the first season (1987) by The Washington Post. The ensemble theater company’s acclaimed repertoire of neglected classics, unfamiliar works by familiar playwrights, and stimulating new plays from around the world is presented in a style that is the Guild’s own — direct and clear, with a strong commitment to adhering to the author’s intent.
