Cast: Carroll & Varla Enchanted, Donmar AbsurdiaDate: 19 June 2007
Further casting has been announced for upcoming plays at the Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre.
At the Donmar (See News, 23 Feb 2007), Lyndsey Marshal and Peter Capaldi (pictured) will feature in actor-director Douglas Hodge’s production of Absurdia, running from 31 July to 8 September 2007 (previews from 26 July). In the triple bill celebration of British absurdist playwrights, NF Simpson’s short one-act plays A Resounding Tinkle and Gladly Otherwise will be paired with the world premiere of The Crimson Hotel, written by Michael Frayn (Noises Off, Donkeys’ Years, Copenhagen, Democracy).
Lyndsey Marshal is currently appearing alongside Hodge in Kneehigh’s adaptation of A Matter of Life and Death, which finishes at the National this week. She was last at the Donmar in the 2001 production of David Mamet’s Boston Marriage, which transferred to the West End and won her the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Her other stage credits include The Hypochondriac, Blood Wedding, Sleeping Beauty, Redundant, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Crucible.
Peter Capaldi’s theatre credits include Feelgood, Treats, Valued Friends and The Judas Kiss (West End and Broadway). On screen, his extensive credits include The Thick of It, Waking the Dead, Skins, Aftersun, Pinochet’s Progress on TV; and on film, Shooting Fish, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Dangerous Liaisons and Soft Top Hard Shoulder, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Short Film.
Marshal and Capaldi are joined in the Absurdia cast by John Hodginkson (The Front Page, The Eleventh Capital) and Judith Scott (Ana in Love, The Romans in Britain). The plays are designed by Vicki Mortimer, with lighting by Paule Constable, sound by Carolyn Downing, movement by Carolina Valdes, and music co-composed by Stu Barker and Douglas Hodge, who has recently been appointed an associate director at the Donmar.
At the National (See News, 4 May 2007), Nancy Carroll and Zubin Varla will star in Clare Bayley’s new version of 19th-century Swedish play The Enchantment, which joins the NT Cottesloe repertory on 1 August 2007 (previews from 24 July). One sunny day in Paris, famous artist and philanderer Gustave Allan (Varla) visits Louise Strindberg (Carroll), convalescing in her brother’s studio, and casts her under his spell. Author Victoria Benedictsson, the inspiration for Strindberg’s Miss Julie, had a scandalous affair which led to her suicide after completing the play in 1888.
Nancy Carroll’s NT credits include The Man of Mode, The Talking Cure, The False Servant and The Voysey Inheritance, for which she was Whatsonstage.com Award-nominated. She’s also recently been seen in the West End in See How They Run and You Never Can Tell. Zubin Varla’s credits include Jesus Christ Superstar, Midnight’s Children, Cyrano de Bergerac, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Life of Galileo and, just seen in the NT Lyttelton, Attempts on Her Life.
Also in The Enchantment cast are: Niamh Cusack, Judith Coke, Edward Davenport, Patrick Drury, Avril Elgar, Madeleine Herrington, Claudia Renton, Marlene Sidaway and Hugh Skinner. The production is directed by Paul Miller and designed by Simon Daw.
- by Terri Paddock
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