Nottingham Playhouse has revealed the cast and creative team for the European première of Australian playwright Tom Wright’s The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man.
This “theatre-poem” will be directed by Stephen Bailey, winner of the Royal Theatrical Support Trust (RTST) Sir Peter Hall Directing Award 2022. It will be his first main stage production.
The cast comprises disabled, deaf and / or neurodivergent actors. Zak Ford-Williams who played Tiny Tim in Mark Gatiss’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story at Nottingham Playhouse in 2021, will play Joseph Merrick.
Joining him will be Annabelle Davis, Daneka Etchells who played Beatrice in the Sheffield Crucible and Ramps on the Moon 2022 tour of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Killian Thomas Lefevre, Nadia Nadarajah who was Celia in As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2018 and Tim Pritchett who played the director of the convicts’ play Ralph Clark in the Nottingham Playhouse and Ramps on the Moon production of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good in 2018.
Set and costume design will be by Simon Kenny, lighting design by Jai Morjaria and music and sound by Nicola T Chang.
Bailey said, “Tom Wright has written a bold, inspired restyling of Merrick's unique life that sees him not as a medical specimen but a man. The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man uses beautiful, poetic text to ask probing questions about work, industrialisation and the value of life.
“It's not about inspiration or pity—it’s about the reality of how we look at those who are the other. In the current cost-of-living crisis, it asks if seeing humans solely as workers is compatible with transformed bodies and long-term health conditions.
“I'm thrilled to be given the platform to tell this story and to have Nottingham Playhouse backing an ambitious production featuring some of the UK's finest disabled talent.”
Ford-Williams added, “I can’t wait to return to Nottingham Playhouse and allow audiences into the incredible, haunting world of the play. I was transfixed by The Real and Imagined History of The Elephant Man from the moment I read it. Then as soon as I experienced Stephen’s vision, precision and warmth for the play I was desperate to be on board. It’s a challenge and a gift of a role.”
The Real and Imagined History of The Elephant Man will run at Nottingham Playhouse from Saturday 16 September until Saturday 7 October. It will then tour to Blackpool Grand Theatre and the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.