With the same spirit, perception and clarity that distinguished his Hamlet: A User's Guide, Michael Pennington here tackles one of Shakespeare's best loved and most frequently performed comedies. Over his 30-year stage career he has directed three different productions of Twelfth Night. Drawing on both his inside knowledge of the play and his lifelong experience as a shakespearean actor, Michael Pennington takes the reader through Twelfth Night scene by detailed scene. As he writes, the play opens up under his guidance and we see it in a new and brilliant light. Themes, connections, characters, individual lines are all revealed in sharp and telling focus.

This serious yet lively book offers an intensely practical account of the way Twelfth Night actually works on stage. It will be of immense value to teachers, students, actors and directors, as well as to anyone who wants to better understand and appreciate the riches of a classic comedy.

Michael Pennington's solo show about Shakespeare, "Sweet William," has been acclaimed throughout Europe and in the US as a unique blend of showmanship and scholarship. In this book, he deepens his exploration of Shakespeare's life and work - and the connection between the two - that lies at its heart.
It is illuminated throughout by the unrivalled insights into the plays that Pennington has gained from the twenty thousand hours he has spent working on them as a leading actor, an artistic director and a director - and as the author of three previous books on individual Shakespeare plays. With practical analysis, wonderfully detailed and entertaining interpretations of characters and scenes, and vivid reflections on Shakespeare's theatre and ours, the result is a masterclass of the most enjoyable kind for theatregoers, professionals, students and anyone interested in Shakespeare.
"A brilliant and intimate insider's guide to Shakespeare from one of our greatest classical actors." - Gregory Doran
"Michael Pennington is a great Shakespearian actor who writes with the authority of an academic. His book analyses the plays, the characters and the playwright's life. It will intrigue, entertain and challenge students, actors and their audiences." - Ian McKellen
"Rich and informative, and something that will be mined for many years to come by anyone interested in Shakespeare and in British theatre." - Professor James Shapiro
"Shakespeare comes wonderfully to life in Michael's beautifully written book." - Rupert Everett
"Irresistibly readable." - Peter Brook
"I can't remember when I learned so much from a single volume as I have from Michael Pennington's engaging, absorbing, congenial, informative new book Sweet William. ... Sometimes he's anecdotal, often lyrical, always thoughtful and occasionally laugh-aloud funny. Pennington's book is a must-read for anyone interested in Shakespeare from almost any angle - actor, drama student, teacher, director, technician, literature student or audience member." - "The Stage"
"The most important and best set of original Shakespeare essays that I have read in over thirty years... Pennington is blessed with an ideal combination of talents and experiences... a wonderful book." - "Speaking English"
Michael Pennington has played leading roles in Shakespeare's plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the English Shakespeare Company (of which he was co-founder and joint Artistic Director), the Peter Hall Company and the BBC. He has also directed several of the plays, and is the author of three books on individual Shakespeare plays ("Hamlet," "Twelfth Night" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"). He has toured his solo shows, "Sweet William" and "Anton Chekhov," throughout the world.

How do you prepare for your first day on the set? Why might a bad audition lead to a good job offer? How should you research? What's the effect of a long tour on your love-life? Can you have a glass of wine before a matinee? What's the difference between transitive and intransitive corpsing? What is stage fright? In Michael Pennington's highly personal guide and memoir there are sections on rehearsals, on television then and now, on who does what on a film set, on the disciplines and rewards of musical theatre, and five directors discuss why the scenery is better on radio. Disability and racial bias in the theatre are discussed and we sometimes hear from other, younger voices who are following parallel paths. Infectiously enthusiastic, both conversational and profound, Let Me Play the Lion Too draws on the author's fifty years of experience to celebrate the deadly serious, sometimes hilarious, often misunderstood but infinitely enriching life of a professional actor.

The Fifth Power is a novel based on the telekinetic ability of a teenage girl who discovers her will to move objects with her mind and control insects.

A normal life, Susan truly wondered if she'd ever have one again. A year ago she discovered the truth, that everything she believed about herself and her entire life was a lie. Up until that fateful day, she was an ordinary housewife who was raised in an orphanage, had attended Purdue University and was happily married to a Naval Officer with two children. Then she received a mysterious phone call and nothing was the same. She began to have flashbacks to events she didn't remember and also seemed to suddenly have amazing martial arts and weapons skills. Most importantly, she discovered "the voice," a mysterious person inside her head who began giving information and advice in stressful situations. All of this forced her to look into her past only to discover nothing about her childhood was real, at least not for her. At one time Susan Carlisle had existed. After leaving for college she was "replaced" by Sasha, a trained agent from the Soviet Union. Now Susan knew that she was originally Sasha and the Russians wanted her to start working for them again. She was barely able to keep her family safe as well as ignorant from the truth while she fought the Russians off. A year later, things seemed to have returned to normal. Her family still doesn't know the truth and Susan has neither heard nor seen any indication that they are still looking for her. That is until she receives a mysterious communique from Vladimir her old handler and her life is once again thrown into turmoil. She will quickly discover that the agents after her this time are better equipped, trained, and organized than before. It will take all of her skills, many of which she still doesn't fully understand, to protect her secrets, keep her family safe and rescue her friends from danger. She will also gain further insight into the true nature of the voice, the mysterious mission it keeps talking about, and her past.

Christmas is only days away when Ashley Wright leaves Utah and college life behind, with nothing to show for the last four years but a bachelor's degree. Her hopes of finding love with a good Mormon boy have eluded her. She believes that a family Christmas at home will lift her spirits and maybe even help her forget the man her heart yearns for. But life has other plans, and soon her lonely heart will be set ... Aglow.

When a teenage girl turns up missing in the small southern town of Prescott, Missouri, it's up to a slick and temperamental sheriff and a unique psychic to solve the utterly horrifying case.

Michael Pennington's work on his solo show about Anton Chekhov has taken London's 'Russian Actor' from the Trans-Siberian Railway to Soviet and post-Soviet Moscow, into the repertoires of the National Theatre and the Old Vic and across Europe. "Are You There, Crocodile?" also includes accounts of his work on Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", Tolstoy's "Strider" and other Russian projects, as well as searching essays on how Chekhov's four masterpieces actually work in the theatre. This book is a study of the great writer, a partial autobiography, and, centrally, an actor's search for identification with the elusive Anton Chekhov himself "the story, humorously told, of an unlikely but tangible companionship."

An original approach to Shakespeare's King Lear: Michael Pennington takes us on a fascinating journey through the play from the point of view of Lear himself and others. Although Michael also writes about his own New York acting experience in 2014, the major part of the book comprises chapters devoted to commentary on the play, its thoughts, motives and its themes in Lear's own words, and other chapters equally devoted to similar commentary from other characters in the play.