The world première of Matt Charman’s new play The Machine at Manchester International Festival will star Hadley Fraser as chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.
Francesca Annis will play Garry’s mother, Clara, and the ‘wunderkind’ engineer behind ‘The Machine’ Deep Blue. Doctor Hsu will be played by Kenneth Lee, who starred in US comedy drama Delocated.
Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse, Josie Rourke, directs this new play based on Kasparov’s headline-grabbing 1997 New York chess tournament against Deep Blue, a super-computer developed by technology giant IBM.
Meanwhile pioneering theatre director Robert Wilson returns to Manchester International Festival with a new theatrical production, The Old Woman.
Developed with and starring dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, and co-starring screen actor Willem Dafoe, it is an adaptation of the work of the same name by Russian author Daniil Kharms.
Carrying echoes of Beckett and Ionesco in its deadpan narrative, The Old Woman follows the story of a struggling writer who cannot find peace within himself.