Courtenay Transfers Friel’s Home Place to ComedyDate: 24 March 2005
As previously tipped (See The Goss, 17 Mar 2005), The Home Place - the latest play by Irishman Brian Friel, who’s been nominated as a potential “greatest living playwright” in our current Big Debate - will transfer to the West End this spring. It will have its British premiere on 25 May 2005 (previews from 7 May) at the Comedy Theatre, where it’s initially booking until 27 August.
Set in 1878, Tom Courtenay (pictured) stars as the widowed Christopher Gore, who lives with his son David and the woman they both love, their housekeeper Margaret, in The Lodge in Ballybeg. In the era of unrest at the dawn of Home Rule, their seemingly serene life is threatened by the arrival of Christopher’s English cousin.
The Home Place premiered on 1 February 2005 at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where it continues a limited season until 2 April. Friel’s last play in the West End, 2002’s Afterplay, which starred Penelope Wilton and John Hurt, also transferred from the Gate. His other plays include Dancing at Lughnasa, Faith Healer, Fathers and Sons, Translations, Volunteers and Philadelphia, Here I Come!.
Courtenay was last seen in the West End in 2003’s Pretending to Be Me, his one-man show about poet Philip Larkin, which also ran at the Comedy Theatre. The actor is well known for his working class film roles of the 1960s, including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Doctor Zhivago and, most famously Billy Liar, which he also played on stage. His other stage credits include The Dresser (also on film) and the original West End cast of Art, in both of which he starred alongside his friend and contemporary Albert Finney. More recently, Courtenay has appeared on screen in Nicholas Nickleby, Last Orders and Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?.
For the Dublin season of The Home Place, Courtenay is joined by Hugh O'Conor (as David) Derbhle Crotty (Margaret) and Nick Dunning (the cousin). Full casting for the London transfer has yet to be confirmed but the majority of the existing company are expected to reprise their roles.
The premiere production is directed by former Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Adrian Noble (recently in the West End with Brand and, still running, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and designed by Peter McKintosh. The Gate Theatre Dublin production is presented in the West End by Sonia Friedman Productions and Michael Colgan.
Currently at the Comedy Theatre, Peter Hall’s revival of Brian Clark’s right-to-die play Whose Life Is It Anyway?, starring Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall, is due to complete its limited season on 30 April 2005.
- by Terri Paddock
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