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Kelly Premieres Forgotten Voices Ahead of FringeDate: 25 April 2007
Stars in Their Eyes presenter turned Olivier Award winner Matthew Kelly will return to the London stage to star in the world premiere of Forgotten Voices, Malcolm McKay’s adaptation of Max Arthur’s best-selling book Forgotten Voices of the Great War. The premiere production has a limited season, from 1 June to 7 July 2007 (previews from 30 May), at west London’s Riverside Studios ahead of a transfer to this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it runs at the Assembly Rooms from 2 to 26 August.
For his 2003 book, subtitled A New History of WWI in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There, military historian Max Arthur assembled hundreds of excerpts from the 1960s sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. The oral testimonies of officers, rank-and-file troops, Australians, Americans, war widows, women in the munitions factories, and German soldiers too provided the basis of the book.
McKay, who also directs Forgotten Voices, has distilled the collective narratives into a performance for five characters (four men and a woman), who recall their experiences: the hopeful hysteria of recruitment; the epic slaughter of the Somme; the reeking, relentless mud of Paschendale; the silent, choking gas; the hunger at home, and the stunned and muted joy of victory; all the elation, fear and suffering of this catastrophic era.
Since returning to acting full time after years as a TV presenter, Kelly has frequently appeared on stage in London and regionally. For his 2003 performance as gentle giant Lennie (pictured) in the Birmingham Rep production of Jonathan Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which transferred to the West End’s Savoy Theatre, he won the 2004 Best Actor Olivier. He was last seen in John Doyle’s revival of Amadeus at Wilton’s Music Hall last September.
No further casting or creative information has yet been announced. Forgotten Voices is presented by Riverside Studios and Assemble Theatre.
- by Terri Paddock
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