HOME Manchester will revive Martin Sherman's play Rose, which premièred at the National Theatre in 1999, starring Dame Janet Suzman in the title role.
From her home in Miami, USA, eighty-year-old Rose describes a life which begins in the shtetls of Eastern Europe and continues through Nazi-occupied Poland, British Mandate Palestine, America, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Janet Suzman said, “this anarchic, agnostic tearaway got to me when I read Martin Sherman’s terrific play. Rose’s ironical self-awareness, her independence of spirit, her fierce instinct for survival is the story we all want to hear about the human spirit at its bravest. In the end she finds a moral purpose to a life forged in an immoral world. I salute Rose and her like.”
The play will be directed by Richard Beecham, who said, “Rose strikes me as a play for our times. Written on the cusp of the millennium as an epitaph to the 20th century, this play about the refugee experience, about anti-Semitism and xenophobia, about the conflict in Israel/Palestine, about America as a safe haven for the persecuted, looks forward to our 21st century world in a frighteningly prescient way.
"It does so with real insight, bravura storytelling and a mordant sense of humour and I am delighted to be working with the extraordinary Janet Suzman to bring Rose alive for audiences today.”
The production will be designed by Simon Kenny with lighting design by Chris Davey and sound design by Adrienne Quartly.
It runs at HOME Manchester from 25 May to 10 June 2017.