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Hall Premieres Gray’s Nell & Fugard Victory at BathDate: 12 March 2007
Sir Peter Hall (pictured) has announced details of his fifth annual repertory season at the Theatre Royal Bath, which will include the world premiere of a new play by Simon Gray and the UK premiere of South African Athol Fugard’s latest, Victory. The season, running from 27 June to 25 August 2007, also comprises revivals of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Alan Ayckbourn’s How the Other Half Loves and Hall’s own adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
The season kicks off in the main house, from 12 to 28 July 2007 (previews from 4 July), with Simon Gray’s Little Nell, based on Claire Tomalin’s award-winning 1990 biography The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. At the height of his popularity and literary genius, Dickens could do no wrong in the eyes of the public – but what they didn’t know about was his all-consuming passion for a girl young enough to be his daughter.
Little Nell will be directed by Peter Hall and designed by Simon Higlett, with a cast featuring Tim Pigott-Smith, Tony Haygarth, Barry Stanton, Cressida Trew and Loo Brealey (Nell). Gray’s other plays include Quartermaine’s Terms, Butley, Otherwise Engaged, Japes, The Old Masters and Hidden Laughter.
It’s joined in the Theatre Royal’s main house, from 13 to 28 July (previews from 28 June) by Hall’s new production of Pygmalion, starring Pigott-Smith as Professor Henry Higgins and Michelle Dockery as Eliza Doolittle. Shaw’s classic 1916 play was the basis for Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical My Fair Lady. Also confirmed for the cast of Hall’s revival, designed again by Higlett, are Haygarth, Stanton, Barbara Jefford and Una Stubbs.
In August, Cordelia Monsey directs the UK premiere of Victory from 15 to 25 August 2007 (previews from 1 August). Vicky was named to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s victorious walk to freedom at the dawn of the new South Africa. Her mother worked happily as Lionel’s maid for 17 years while, as a child, Vicky played at Lionel’s house as if it were her own. When Lionel, widowed and alone, catches two burglars ransacking his home and discovers that one of them is Vicky, it’s more than his possessions that are destroyed.
The latest play by Athol Fugard – whose other modern classics include Master Harold and the Boys, The Island, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Road to Mecca - is presented next month at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre ahead of its UK premiere. The Bath production stars Richard Johnson as Lionel and Pippa Bennett-Warner, Newcomer of the Year nominee in this year’s Whatsonstage.com Awards for Caroline, Or Change at the National, as Vicky.
The last production in the main house will be Alan Strachan’s revival of How the Other Half Loves, running from 15 to 23 August 2007 (previews from 7 August) and starring Nicholas Le Prevost and Marsha Fitzalan (from TV’s The New Statesman). Alan Ayckbourn’s 1969 situation comedy juggles time and space as it presents the intricate lives and liaisons, passions and growing panic of three married couples. Paul Farnsworth designs both Victory and How the Other Half Loves.
And finally, in the Egg studio, Rachel O’Riordan directs the first major revival of Peter Hall’s 1984 National Theatre staging of George Orwell’s 1945 literary classic Animal Farm from 13 to 21 July 2007 (previews from 27 June). In Orwell’s satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, prize-winning boar Old Major’s speech that “All animals are equal” inspires a revolt against the farmer’s dictatorship, with all running smoothly until power-crazed pigs develop their own brutal tyranny. No further casting has yet been announced.
- by Terri Paddock
