The cast has been announced for The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, which opens the new season at London's Royal Court Theatre, starting next month.
Tom Brooke will play Gorge in a new play by Dennis Kelly which follows the character of the title across three decades, a journey from innocence to savage greed. This is a Royal Court début for Kelly who won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Matilda the Musical.
Tom Brooke played Lee in Jersualem at the Royal Court and in the West End; other credits include Wild East at the Royal Court, The Kitchen at the National Theatre and I am the Wind at the Young Vic. Pippa Haywood, Joshua James, Jonathan McGuiness, Aaron Monaghan, Kate O'Flynn and Alan Williams complete the cast.
This will be the first directorial role at the Court for Vicky Featherstone as the theatre's Artistic Director, a position she took up in the spring. She will also direct Abi Morgan’s The Mistress Contract in 2014.
Other productions included in Featherstone's inaugural season are a bumper omnibus edition of The Soap Opera currently live-streamed nightly from Peckham, a continuation of the Big Idea series from the Open Court season, a National Theatre of Scotland co–production of Let the Right One In an adaptation of the work by John Ajvide Lindqvist by Jack Thorne, and a one-woman Samuel Beckett trilogy with Lisa Dwan.
Readings of five new plays by Chilean writers looking at contemporary Chile mark the 40th anniversary of the 1973 military coup that ended the democratic government. The Royal Court has been working with emerging playwrights in Chile since April 2012 in partnership with the British Council, the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes and the Festival Internacional de Teatro Santiago a Mil.
The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas plays the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from 5 September. There is a post-show talk on 1 October; the evening performance on 16 October will be captioned and the matineé performance of 12 October will be audio described. Age Guidance 14 years.
For further information and booking for the The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas and details of the rest of the season visit www.royalcourttheatre.com.