The National Theatre's programme from May to August includes a new
production of The Revenger's Tragedy, new plays by Rebecca Lenkiewicz
and Michael Frayn, and a new devised piece by Katie Mitchell.
The Pitman Painters
By Lee Hall
Cottesloe Theatre
Opening 21st May (previews from 19th), limited run until 25th June
Lee Hall's The Pitman
Painters, inspired by a book by William Feaver, will receive
its London premiere at the Cottesloe Theatre on 21st May. A co-production
between Live Theatre, Newcastle, and the National Theatre, the play
is directed by Max Roberts and designed by Gary McCann, with lighting
by Douglas Kuhrt and sound by Martin Hodgson. The cast is Christopher
Connel, Michael Hodgson, Ian Kelly, Brian Lonsdale, Lisa McGrillis,
Deka Walmsley, David Whitaker and Phillippa Wilson.
In 1934, a group of Ashington miners hired a professor to teach an
art appreciation evening class. Rapidly abandoning theory in favour
of practice, the pitmen began to paint. Within a few years the most
avant-garde artists became their friends and their work was acquired
by prestigious collections; but every day they worked, as before,
down the mine.
Straight from a sell-out season at Live Theatre Newcastle, Lee Hall's
new play is a humorous, deeply moving and timely look at art, class
and politics.
An exhibition of paintings by the Ashington Group will be on display.
The Revenger's Tragedy
By Thomas Middleton
Travelex £10 Tickets
Olivier Theatre
Opening 4th June (previews from 27th May), continuing in repertoire
Directed by Melly Still. The cast is led by Rory Kinnear as Vindice
and also includes Adjoa Andoh, Tom Andrews, Ken Bones, Donatella Cabras,
Billy Carter, Elliot Cowan, Conor Doyle, Barbara Flynn, John Heffernan,
Peter Hinton, Derek Howard, Pieter Lawman, Jane Leaney, Tommy Luther,
Katherine Manners, Rob McNeill, Pamela Merrick, Simon Nagra, Rick
Nodine, Jamie Parker, Richard Shanks, Ross Waiton and Lizzie Winkler.
Designed by Melly Still and Ti Green, with lighting by Paul Anderson,
music by Adrian Sutton, and sound by Paul Arditti.
Afterlife
By Michael Frayn
Lyttelton Theatre
Opens 10th June (previews from 3rd), continuing in repertoire
Directed by Michael Blakemore. Roger Allam, who last appeared at the
National in Michael Frayn's Democracy,
returns to play Max Reinhardt; the cast also includes David Burke
(last seen at the NT in Frayn's Copenhagen), Abigail Cruttenden, Peter
Forbes, Glyn Grain, Selina Griffiths and David Schofield.
Max Reinhardt, one the greatest impresarios of theatrical history,
had a lifelong ambition - to dissolve the boundary between theatre
and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg Festival he directed
a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to
summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses
is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures
that money can buy.
Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death
into Austria - whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable
as Everyman himself. Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt
achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have
foreseen.
…some trace of her
Cottesloe Theatre
Opening 30th July (previews from 23rd), continuing in repertoire
Inspired by The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky and adapted by Katie
Mitchell and the company.
Directed by Katie Mitchell; Leo Warner will be director of photography,
with design by Vicki Mortimer, lighting by Paule Constable and sound
by Gareth Fry. The cast includes Hattie Morahan and Ben Whishaw.
A woman lies dead on a bed in her wedding dress, a silver knife through
her heart. The two men who loved her lie beside her.
This multimedia performance develops the use of live video seen in
Katie Mitchell's ground-breaking production of Waves
at the National Theatre in 2006/07 (Waves returns to the Cottesloe
Theatre in August ahead of a UK and international tour).
Her Naked Skin
By Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Travelex £10 Tickets, Olivier Theatre
Opens 31st July (previews from 24th), continuing in repertoire
Directed by Howard Davies and designed by Rob Howell, with lighting
by Neil Austin and sound by Paul Groothuis.
London 1913. Militancy in the Suffragette Movement is at its height.
Thousands of women of all classes serve time in Holloway Prison in
their fight to gain the vote. Amongst them is Lady Celia Cain who
feels trapped by both the policies of the day and the shackles of
a frustrating marriage. Inside, she meets a young seamstress, Eve
Douglas, and her life spirals into an erotic but dangerous chaos.
6pm at the National Theatre:
De Profundis and A Slight Ache
Lyttelton Theatre
De Profundis
By Oscar Wilde, edited by Merlin Holland
16th June, 1st & 2nd July at 6pm. Tickets £10. Running
time approx. 50mins.
During his sentence in Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde wrote a letter
to his lover, agonising over the lack of contact. It is perhaps
the greatest love letter ever written, filled with a torrent of
accusation, passion and eventually reconciliation. A century later
De Profundis remains an astonishing tour-de-force
of self analysis. Reviving his National Theatre performance from
2000, Corin Redgrave reads De Profundis. The director is
Richard Nelson.
A Slight Ache by Harold Pinter
21st, 25th, 28th, 29th July; 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 13th August at
6pm. Tickets £10. Running time approx. 50mins
A Slight Ache takes an oblique view of a long-married couple,
the irascible Edward and his frustrated wife Flora, when the arrival
of a statuesque silent stranger splinters their loveless bourgeois
marriage. Simon Russell Beale and Clare Higgins play the couple
in this early work by Harold Pinter; Iqbal Khan directs.
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