BUBWITH schoolboy Sam Hird has been selected for the first Shakespeare’s Globe Young Players in London. The 14-year-old Pocklington School pupil is among 20 company members chosen after three rounds of auditions, attended initially by just short of 1,000 actors aged 12 to 16.

The Young Players will perform John Marston’s The Malcontent in the inaugural 2014 season at the newly built indoor Sam Wanamaker Theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Sam has started training already with the Globe’s experts in Jacobean drama for ten candle-lit performances next April of a play first performed circa 1603 by the Children of the Chapel, a 17th century company made up solely of teenage boys.

Meanwhile, Sam is appearing this week in another all-boys production of a Jacobean play: Pocklington School’s performances of Nathan Field’s A Woman Is A Weathercock at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall in York last night and tonight.

Described as “a play to send you home chuckling”, it revolves around Sir John and his three daughters with five suitors. Bellafront is marrying a man she does not love; Kate’s beloved will not defend her honour; Lucida loves Bella’s fiancé. How can this tangle of lovers be resolved and why are there two priests with big beards? Enter Nevill, the fixer and master of disguises and cunning plans, the role believed to have been first played by Field himself and now Sam.

“Nevill is a charming playboy, popular with the very rich and the very ambitious alike,” says Emily Frankish, Pocklington School’s communications officer.

“He’s the best friend of Scudmore, who is in love with Bella, who is marrying someone else. Nevill is the one who manipulates everyone else, his trickery and wit resulting in a happy ending for all – more or less!”

In the Globe Young Players production, Sam has been cast as the old bawd Maquerelle. “So, by a lucky coincidence, he’s getting the chance to appear in two unique productions that revive the Jacobean tradition of young players companies,” says Emily.

All this comes on top of Sam having appeared as Nana the dog and Cecco in Pick Me Up Theatre’s production of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s Peter Pan, A Musical Adventure at the Grand Opera House, York, last Wednesday to Saturday.

• Doors open tonight at 7pm for the 7.30pm performance of Field’s play. Tickets cost £8 for adults, £5 for children, and are on sale at Pocklington School and the Merchant Adventurers Hall or you can phone 01904 654818 or by email to enquiries@theyorkcompany.co.uk