Shakespeare Club membership now open: new President Alexandra Gilbreath

Membership is now open for the 2026-7 season and a full list of talks is available on the Current Talks page, along with notes about the speakers. For how to join go to the Become a Member page. We are delighted to welcome as our new President the distinguished award-winning actor Alexandra Gilbreath who will be in conversation with last year’s President, Paul Edmondson at our first meeting on 13 October. Many of you will remember Alexandra for her work in the comedies such as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Mistress Ford in the musical version of The Merry Wives of Windsor, but she also performed as Juliet with David Tennant and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale with Anthony Sher. Much other distinguished work includes Hedda Gabler, and she has appeared many times on TV and film.

There are some lovely connections between some of our speakers this season. Alexandra and Perry Mills, our December speaker, both appeared in Michael Wood’s (2017-18  President) BBC series on Shakespeare’s Life. The programme on Shakespeare’s Company  that Alexandra featured in also included Gregory Doran (2004-5 and 2024-5 President).

Michael Wood did much research on the documents of early London to establish one of the places Shakespeare lived, and Lucy Munro has now found even more evidence that gives us more information about Shakespeare at the Blackfriars. Hopefully members will enjoy seeing these interconnections work together.

The photograph shows Alexandra Gilbreath (Mistress Ford) and Desmond Barritt (Falstaff) in the 2014 production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Musical. Copyright PeterLeMay (RSC)