Cast: Asher in Kingston, Full Glass & Nunn's TempestDate: 13 July 2011
Jane Asher will star in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Harley Granville Barker’s Farewell to the Theatre which will play in rep at the Rose Theatre Kingston this autumn.
The actress and baking star was last seen at the Rose in Peter Hall's 2009 revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce.
Asher was most recently seen on stage in The Reluctant Debutante at Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre. Amongst her other theatre credits are appearances at the National Theatre, Royal Court and in the West End. Her TV credits include The Palace, Poirot and The Old Guys.
Asher is joined in the cast by Kirsty Besterman, Bruce Mackinnon and Jenny Rainsford with full cast still to be announced.
Asher plays Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s classic comedy. The production, which opens on 5 October 2011 (previews from 22 September), will be directed by the Rose’s artistic director Stephen Unwin.
Harley Granville Barker’s Farewell to the Theatre, which also opens on 5 October (previews from 30 September), receives its European premiere at the Rose, directed by Unwin. In it Asher will play Dorothy, an actress at the height of her career who decides to stop acting and turn her attention to more serious pursuits.
Caroline Loncq, Brian Protheroe, Suzan Sylvester and Stanley Townsend will join previously announced Antony Sher and Tara Fitzgerald for the Tricycle's remounting of Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass. It plays a limited run at the Tricycle Theatre prior to transferring to the West End's Vaudeville Theatre.
The Tricycle's acclaimed production of Broken Glass will return to Kilburn from 10 August to 10 September 2011, before opening at the Vaudeville Theatre on 16 September (previews from 14 September) for a limited season to 10 December 2011.
Antony Sher reprises his leading role as Phillip Gellburg, a Jewish man in New York City in 1938, whose wife Sylvia is so affected by Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) in Nazi Germany that she becomes temporarily paralysed and seeks treatment from a psychiatrist. The part of Sylvia, previously played by Lucy Cohu, is now played by Tara Fitzgerald.
Stanley Townsend plays Dr Harry Hyman. Nigel Lindsay, now playing the titular ogre in West End musical Shrek, won the Whatsonstage.com Award for the role in 2010. Townsend's theatre credits include Tribes, The Alice Trilogy, Shining City, Under The Blue Sky and The Weir at the Royal Court Theatre, Happy Now?, Phedre, Gethsemane, Remember This and Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre, Prayers of Sherkin at the Old Vic and The Plough and the Stars at the Young Vic.
Caroline Loncq’s (Margaret Hyman) stage credits include Scorched for the Old Vic and Dialogue Productions, Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors for the RSC, An Absolute Turkey at the Gielgud and King of Hearts for Hampstead and Out of Joint.
Brian Protheroe (Stanton Case) remains in his role from the Tricycle’s original production. His other stage credits include Noises Off for Birmingham Rep, The Convict’s Opera for Out of Joint, The Lord of the Rings at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Losing Louis at the Hampstead Theatre and Trafalgar Studios, The Sisters Rosensweig at the Old Vic and The Ice Man Cometh, Long Voyage Home, Larkrise to Candleford and Dispatches at the National. His screen work includes the role of Samuel Walker in the eighth series of Spooks.
Suzan Sylvester’s stage credits include Three Sisters On Hope Street for the Hampstead, Crooked at the Bush Theatre, Tabloid Caligula at the Arcola Theatre, Black Milk, Terrorism and Cleansed for the Royal Court, The Reckless Are Dying Out for the Lyric Hammersmith, All My Sons, The Glass Menagerie and Romeo and Juliet at the Young Vic and an Olivier Award-winning performance in Miller's A View From The Bridge at the National and the West End's Aldwych Theatre.
The production is directed by Iqbal Khan and designed by Mike Britton. It’s presented in the West End by PW Productions and Tricycle London Productions.
Currently at the Vaudeville Theatre, renowned American troupe The Flying Karamazov Brothers continue their West End season until 10 September 2011.
Finally in casting news, Elisabeth Hopper, currently playing a minor role in Trevor Nunn's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, will remain at that address to play Miranda to Ralph Fiennes’s Prospero in Nunn's upcoming production of The Tempest.
Nicholas Lyndhurst best known for playing Rodney in the BBC's long-running sitcom Only Fools and Horses has today been announced as the production's Trinculo. His theatre credits include Straight and Narrow at the Aldwych, The Foreigner for the Albery Theatre, Harding’s Luck at Greenwich Theatre and Trial Run at Oxford Playhouse. Most recently he starred as Norman in Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser at the Duke of York’s Theatre.
Clive Wood, who also appeared at the Haymarket opposite Sienna Miller and Sheridan Smith in Nunn's Flare Path, will take the role of Stephano. They are joined in the cast by Julian Wadham who appeared alongside Fiennes in 1996 feature film The English Patient; Giles Terera whose stage credits include the West End production of Avenue Q and numerous National Theatre productions including Death and the King's Horseman and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other; and Tom Byam Shaw, whose recent London stage appearances have include Salome at the Hampstead and Les Parents Terribles as part of Donmar Warehouse's season at Trafalgar Studios.
The rest of the company have been announced as: Chris Andrew Mellon (Sebastian), Michael Benz (Ferdinand), Jim Creighton (Adrian), Ian Drysdale (Francisco), Andrew Jarvis (Gonzalo), James Simmons (Alonso), as well as Steven Butler, Eke Chukwu, Meline Danielewicz, Gisele Edwards, Hayley Ellenbrook, Grahame Fox, Charlie Hamblett, Jami Reid-Quarrell and Itxaso Moreno.
The Theatre Royal Haymarket production marks Nunn's first of The Tempest, and also marks the directors first project with Ralph Fiennes. The production is the third instalment in his year-long residency at the theatre.
- by Andrew Girvan
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