Tantalus

John Barton is a writer and director who, with Peter Hall, co-founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Barton was an active director for over forty years. His landmark productions included Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola, and a sequence of Shakespeare's History Plays (with Peter Hall). A prolific writer and adaptor, he has spent over 30 years developing Tantalus, which is an extension of his earlier work, The Greeks (1980). He has adapted some twenty other texts for the theatre and has also had published The First Stage, The Hollow Crown, The Wars of the Roses, The Greeks, La Ronde, The Rover and the legendary Playing Shakespeare (also a television series).