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King & Country Launches Tour, New WOS Website

John Wilson’s classic First World War play For King and Country is brought to a fresh generation of theatregoers in a major new production, directed by Tristam Powell, which launches a two-month, seven-venue tour today (25 February 2009).

Coinciding with the play’s opening at the Theatre Royal Plymouth, producers also today unveil the show’s new website, which has been built by Whatsonstage.com. www.forkingandcountry.co.uk can also be accessed via fkac.whatsonstage.com.

With the Whatsonstage.com SiteBuilder and TheatreAlerts email marketing services, producers, theatres and performers can quickly and cost-effectively build a professional web presence – without worrying about data protection, web hosting and other issues – and plug in immediately to Britain’s biggest and best theatre website, benefiting from Whatsonstage.com’s ever-rising traffic from avid theatregoers, who make more than 500,000 visits a month to our main website, generating over 3.5 million page impressions a month.

Matthew Byam Shaw, who is producing For King and Country for The Touring Partnership, commented: "We are delighted with the website Whatsonstage.com produced for For King and Country. They were accommodating and innovative. We now look forward to the tour opening this week with the same success."

For more information on Whatsonstage.com services, click here.

For King and Country tells the story of a simple young soldier, Hamp (Adam Gillen), who walks away from the battlefield at Passchendaele after enduring the death of his entire battalion. Lt Hargreaves (Daniel Weyman, recently seen in the title role of Nicholas Nickleby in the West End) is assigned to defend the private who is charged with desertion. The prisoner’s devastating experience of the Front changes the lawyer’s outlook on war. His sense of duty to the boy becomes a passionate compulsion to save him from the firing squad.

The cast also includes David Yelland (Nicholas Nickleby, An Ideal Husband, Man and Boy), Dugald Bruce Lockhart (Deep Blue Sea, Propeller’s Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew), Robert Ashcroft, Kevin Doyle, Patrick Drury, John Hollingworth, Tomos James, Benjamin Noble, Sam Pamphilon, Nick Rhys, Martin Savage and John Sheerman.

John Hurt launched his career in the original 1964 stage production of For King and Country, while Joseph Losey’s film adaptation the same year starred Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde. Producers say: “This play has a history of springboarding its actors to fame and we fully expect our talented, young cast to have equally exciting futures.”

The new production is designed by Tim Shortall, with lighting by Johanna Town and sound by Gregory Clarke. Following this launch week at Plymouth, For King and Country visits Cheltenham, Coventry, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Belfast, where the touring schedule concludes on 18 April 2009. For further information on tour stops, cast and creative details, visit www.forkingandcountry.co.uk.

- by Terri Paddock

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