Dreamgirls star Rose to play Cleopatra
Classically trained actor takes on Shaw's role of Egyptian queen onstage at festival next season
Dreamgirls star Anika Noni Rose will play opposite acting legend Christopher Plummer in Caesar and Cleopatra at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival next year.
Rose, 34, a classically trained actor who won a Tony award in 2004 for her role in Broadway's Caroline, or Change, starred opposite Beyoncé Knowles and Jennifer Hudson in the Dreamgirls movie last year.
Toronto-born Plummer, 77, as revealed earlier in the Star, will play Julius Caesar in the play written by George Bernard Shaw.
Des McAnuff, co-artistic director of the production, calls Plummer "an international treasure" and says the veteran actor gets on "like a house on fire" with Rose.
Caesar and Cleopatra will mark only the third time that a Shaw play has been performed at Stratford. The playwright's works are prominently showcased at another Ontario theatre institution, the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Plummer – whose film credits include The Insider and A Beautiful Mind, and who is perhaps best known for playing Capt. Georg von Trapp in the The Sound of Music – has appeared at Stratford before, including turns in Barrymore in 1996 and King Lear in 2002.
Other Stratford productions announced for next year include The Music Man and Cabaret.
Officials say they want to give audiences a variety of plays but still remain committed to Shakespeare works. The company is changing its name in November from the Stratford Festival of Canada to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
I absolutely loved her in Dreamgirls!! This should be very interesting. t4p!! 
. One of countless examples. I don't see how this is any different.
