Terence Rigby in The Caretaker
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Rigby Returns to Pinter Care of Bristol's Caretaker

Terence Rigby returns next week to the UK stage, after a five-year absence, to star in Lindsay Posner's revival of Harold Pinter's 20th-century classic The Caretaker. The production opens the autumn season at Bristol Old Vic, where it runs from 9 to 27 September 2003 (previews from 6 September).

Premiered in 1960, The Caretaker is set in the late 1950s in a seedy west London flat where two grown brothers - played by Paul Ritter (Food Chain, Accidental Death of an Anarchist) and Simon Kunz (Mojo, House of Correction, TV's Auf Wiedersehn Pet) - have their lives disrupted by a bad-tempered tramp.

Rigby (pictured), who plays the tramp Davies, is a Pinter aficionado, having appeared in the world premieres of the both The Homecoming with Ian Holm and No Man's Land with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud. His last UK stage appearance was in Peter Hall's 1998 West End production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. More recently, Rigby has appeared in numerous productions in New York, including Amadeus, Saved and Agamemnon. His screen credits include Tomorrow Never Dies, Elizabeth and the upcoming Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts.

Director Posner has recently been busy in London with the West End revival of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, featuring Hollywood's Matthew Perry and Minnie Driver, and the world premiere of Nick Dear's Power, still running at the National starring Robert Lindsay. opens at the National in June. The Caretaker is designed by Christopher Oram.

It's followed - from 3 to 25 October 2003 - at Bristol by a 1920s-set production of The Comedy of Errors, which is directed by Old Vic joint artistic director David Farr and designed by Ti Kemp. The cast for the Shakespeare comedy will feature Daniel Betts, Christopher Staines, Paul Ready, Mark Rice-Oxley, Will Tacey, Stuart Crossman, Patrick Romer, Rebecca Smart, Sheila Ballantine, Andrew Melville, Phillipa Peak and Daisy Haggard.

Further ahead, the Bristol autumn season (See News, 31 May 2003) will see Wilson Milam's staging of Sam Shepard's 1981 play about feuding brothers, True West, which runs from 31 October to 22 November 2003, and a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's rarely performed Broadway musical version of Cinderella, directed by Timothy Sheader and running 28 November 2003 to 24 January 2004.

Playwright and director David Farr and dramaturg Simon Reade took over from Gareth Machin as joint artistic directors of Bristol Old Vic in March 2003 (See Features, 17 Feb 2003).

- by Terri Paddock

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