Emma Rice’s Tristan & Yseult, the show she first made with Kneehigh, is back in Brooklyn at St. Ann’s Warehouse through November 22, twelve years after St. Ann’s gave it its New York premiere.
Rice adapted and directs the piece, with a text by Carl Grose and Anna Maria Murphy. It now travels as the original Kneehigh/Emma Rice Company production, co-produced by Emma Rice Company with Alexandra Palace Theatre, Nottingham Playhouse and York Theatre Royal.
The legend is told from the Club of the Unloved. King Mark of Cornwall sends Tristan to fetch Yseult, the Irish bride he intends to marry; on the crossing the two fall in love, and everything that follows is both heroic and ruinous. Rice stages it with homemade aerial work and a live band playing new and found music.
John Leader plays Tristan and Nandi Bhebhe plays Yseult. The score is by Stu Barker and the choreography by Etta Murfitt; Bill Mitchell’s original set and costumes have been refreshed by Vicki Mortimer, with lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and sound by Simon Baker.
The evening runs 2 hours 10 minutes with an intermission. St. Ann’s pitches it at adults and brave children aged 8 and up, and no one under 5 is admitted. Expect haze, fire effects and flashing lights, and depictions of sex and self-harm; the audience is handed latex balloons, so anyone with a latex allergy should tell front-of-house staff on arrival.
From Brooklyn the production heads back to Britain, where it plays London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre from March 11 to 27, 2027.
Tristan & Yseult plays St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water Street, Brooklyn, through Sunday, November 22, 2026.
