Cast: Stubbs Shrieks at Soho, Clever Dick, NirvanaDate: 28 April 2006
Casting has been announced for three upcoming plays at leading Off-West End theatres.
Imogen Stubbs will lead the cast in 21-year-old Moses Raine’s Shrieks of Laughter at Soho Theatre (See News, 13 Apr 2006), from 11 May to 3 June 2006. Stubbs will play India, mother of Henry (played by recent drama school graduate Tom Payne), an unsettled young man who the audience follows on a journey into his murky subconscious.
Stubbs’ recent stage credits include Hamlet at the Old Vic, Mum’s the Word at the Albery, The Relapse and Betrayal at the National. She and Payne are joined in Shrieks of Laughter by Sam Cox (Tin Tin, The UN Inspector, Festen, Clarence Smith and another recent drama school graduate, Oliver Coleman.
Raine was shortlisted for Soho’s Verity Bargate Award in 2004 for The Survival Handbook and was then asked to become a writer on attachment at theatre. Shrieks of Laughter is directed by Maria Aberg.
Adrian Rawlins (Dinner, A View from the Bridge at the National, Harry Potter’s father in the films of the children’s books) stars in the world premiere of Clever Dick, a new comedy by Crispin Whittell, whose Darwin in Malibu was staged at Hampstead in 2004 (See News, 8 Mar 2006).
In New Mexico in 1945 - 30 days before the dawn of the Atomic Age at Trinity, less than two months before Little Boy is dropped over Hiroshima - the Jewish physicist Richard Feynman makes a wrong turn out of Albuquerque and finds himself entangled in an unlikely tale of espionage. The cast also includes Jennifer Higham, Jamie King and Jenny Gleave. Whittell himself directs the premiere production, running from 18 May to 17 June 2006 at Hampstead.
At Islington’s King’s Head Theatre, EastEnders’ Shaun Williamson and Wendy Morgan will be joined in the cast of Arthur Kopit’s 1991 play Road to Nirvana by Alan Turner, Marem Hernandez and Ian Porter (See News, 29 Mar 2006). Williamson is a failed movie producer turned drug dealer, while Morgan is his Moll. The satirical slice of 1980s Hollywood life is directed by Colin McFarlane and runs from 4 May (previews from 2 May) to 28 May 2006. The production is presented by Kate Plantin, writer and broadcaster Bonnie Greer and comedian Lenny Henry.
- by Caroline Ansdell
