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Northampton Sets Terms, Othello, Code & Paradise

Simon Godwin's revival of Simon Gray's 1981 comedy Quartermaine's Terms starts performances tonight (19 September 2003) at Northampton's Theatre Royal, where it continues until 4 October before transferring to the Salisbury Playhouse, which is co-producing, from 9 October to 1 November 2003. At Northampton, the production opens the Theatre Royal's autumn season of plays - including a major new staging of Shakespeare's Othello and a revival of Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code - themed around the social outsider.

Set in the 1960s in a school of English for foreigners in Cambridge, Quartermaine's Terms is a moving account of several years in the lives of seven teachers, including St John Quartermaine who signally fails to keep pace with the world around him. The cast includes Marty Cruickshank, Josh Cohen, Sophie Shaw, Jonas Armstrong, Ian Price, Timothy Davies and Rupert Wickham as the man of the title.

The season continues with Othello, starring Ron Cephas Jones (the American star of Jesus Hopped the A Train) in the title role with Finbar Lynch (Not About Nightingales, To the Green Fields Beyond) as Iago. Directed by artistic director Rupert Goold (Sunday Father, Scaramouche Jones), Othello runs at Northampton from 10 October to 1 November 2003, ahead of a regional tour.

On the eve of 50th anniversary of Alan Turing's death, Philip Franks will play the Bletchley Park mathematician who masterminded the breaking of the Nazi 'Enigma' code in Philip Wilson's revival of Hugh Whitemore's play Breaking the Code, based on Andrew Hodges' book Alan Turing, The Enigma. The 1986 play ran in the West End and on Broadway with Derek Jacobi in the lead. The new production runs at Northampton from 7 to 29 November 2003.

It's followed by Cinderella, this year's Christmas pantomime, from 9 December 2003 to 17 January 2004. Further ahead, from 30 January to 14 February 2004, the Theatre Royal will undertake its most ambitious ever project: the world premiere of Ben Power's stage adaptation of John Milton's epic 17th-century poem, Paradise Lost, which will be directed by Goold.

- by Terri Paddock

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