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| Ian Rickson at today's press conference |
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Stoppard Debuts, Pinter Performs for Court's 50thDate: 11 October 2005
Royal Court artistic director Ian Rickson (pictured) today announced plans for next year’s year-long celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of George Devine’s establishment of the English Stage Company at the historic Sloane Square theatre.
New plays, new guises
In keeping with the Court’s raison d’être, the programme will concentrate on new work rather than revivals of past triumphs. As previously tipped (See The Goss, 4 Oct 2005), Tom Stoppard will make his Royal Court debut with his latest, Rock ‘n’ Roll. Specially written for the theatre, the play spans the recent history of Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution. It will be directed by fellow Court first-timer Trevor Nunn and will premiere in June 2006.
Explaining his involvement in the anniversary programme, Stoppard said: “I want to be part of the Royal Court’s history before I pack it in. Some of best nights of the last 40 years have been spent in the Royal Court’s auditorium. I don’t want to fall under a bus before having a play on its stage.”
Other highlights will see artists with strong Court associations returning with new work or in new guises. Playwright Harold Pinter will star in a revival of Samuel Beckett’s one-man Krapp’s Last Tape, while author-director Terry Johnson will premiere Piano/Forte, his new play “about no one famous” but written for actresses Kelly Reilly and Hollywood’s Alicia Witt. Former Royal Court artistic directors Max Stafford-Clark, Anthony Page, William Gaskill (adapting and directing James Joyces’ Ulysses) and Stephen Daldry will also return (though the last has yet to confirm details of his project).
There will also be new plays by contemporary playwrights Stella Feehily (O Go My Man directed by Stafford-Clark), Tanika Gupta (looking at sex tourism in Jamaica in Sugar Mummies directed by Indhu Rubasingham), Simon Farquhar (Rainbow Kiss directed by Page), Christopher Shinn (The Dying City), Marina Carr (The Woman and Scarecrow) and Simon Stephens (with a new take on anger, in homage to Osborne).
Looking back in joy
Landmark productions from the Court’s history will be commemorated with a ten-week season of rehearsed readings - 50 Readings, 50 Writers, 50 Years - in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. The readings will commence in January with John Osborne’s The Entertainer (1957) and will conclude in March with Roy Williams’ Fallout (2003). Where possible, original company members of selected plays will be invited back to reprise their roles. In addition, drama students from Guildhall, LAMDA and the National Youth Theatre will present four Court classics: John Arden’s Live Like Pigs (1958), Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls (1982), David Storey’s The Changing Room (1971) and Christopher Hampton’s Savages (1973).
Rickson, before stepping down as artistic director at the end of 2006 (See News, 29 Sep 2005), has in his own words been “a bit greedy” by directing two major productions as part of the 50th programme – a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine (1979) and Chekhov’s The Seagull, in a new version by Christopher Hampton. The pair represents a challenge for Rickson who’s “never directed an old play”.
Celebratory confetti
“Celebratory confetti” around the main programme will include a series of “walks, talks, exhibitions, cake and partying”. Amongst these special events will be a one-off performance of John Osborne’s groundbreaking Look Back in Anger on 8 May 2006, 50 years to the day after it had its world premiere at a two-month-old Court; an improvised satire on the theatre care of Ken Campbell; and a staging of Richard O'Brien’s cult musical The Rocky Horror Stage, which started life Upstairs in 1973 and was voted the People’s Choice favourite by Court visitors (Ariel Dorfman’s 1991 drama Death and the Maiden and Look Back in Anger came second and third in the poll).
Acknowledging the Court’s development as a theatre for international playwrights, 2006 will also see the 18th annual International Residency as well as festivals of new plays from Mexico. The Court’s pivotal role in the closing of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and the abolition of stage censorship in the UK will be explored through extracts from and debates about various banned plays.
- by Terri Paddock
** WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ROYAL COURT OVER THE PAST 50 YEARS? HAVE YOUR SAY BY VOTING IN OUR BIG DEBATE! **
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