David Fleeshman will play incomparable detective Charlie Resnick in the première of John Harvey’s adaptation of his own novel Darkness, Darkness at Nottingham Playhouse.
Former Nottinghamshire writer Harvey has written 12 novels about the jazz-loving sleuth, adapting some of them for a television series which starred Tom Wilkinson. Now Resnick is appearing on stage for the first time.
Fleeshman, who was in the National Theatre production of Nick Stafford’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse, has appeared at Nottingham Playhouse twice before. He was in Steven Berkoff’s Ritual in Blood in 2001 and Greg Doran’s production of Waiting for Godot in 1982.
Elizabeth Twells, who played Doreen in Amanda Whittington’s adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning at the Mercury Theatre Colchester in 2014, will play impassioned activist Jenny Hardwick. The cast also includes Martin Miller, Chris Donnelly, Simone Saunders and Emma Thornett.
Darkness, Darkness, set in present-day Nottingham, has Resnick on the verge of retirement when DI Catherine Njoroge convinces him to take on one more case after the discovery of the body of Jenny Hardwick, a young woman who disappeared during the miners’ strike 30 years earlier.
As Resnick and Njoroge’s investigation unfolds, old wounds sustained on the Nottinghamshire picket lines are reopened and memories of broken relationships resurface. Resnick has to confront his guilt for his role in policing the strike.
Harvey said, “it was the excitement of the then newly opened Nottingham Playhouse that first brought me to the city in the mid-‘60s; the prospect of seeing one of my Resnick novels dramatised on that same stage so many years later is truly exciting.”
New Perspectives touring company artistic director Jack McNamara who directs Darkness, Darkness said, “we’re thrilled to be working with Nottingham Playhouse for the first time to tell this story by one of Nottingham's major international voices, John Harvey.
“We’ve had the thrilling opportunity to work with one of the country's leading crime novelists to find a theatrical form for his latest investigation into the dark heart of our city.”
Nottingham Playhouse artistic director Giles Croft said, “it was in 2012 at the opening of Diary Of A Football Nobody by William Ivory that I first spoke to John about the possibility of his writing something for Nottingham Playhouse.
“Those sorts of conversations are always entered into with the expectation of rejection, but here we are preparing for the opening of Darkness, Darkness which is every bit is entertaining, intelligent and surprising as I could have wished.
“It’s thrilling to have a new play as part of our Sweet Vengeance season and I can’t think of a more appropriate person to have written it.”
Darkness, Darkness runs from Friday 30 September until Saturday 15 October.