Timothy West stars in Harwood’s Handyman

The
Handyman concerns a married couple (played by Caroline
Langrishe and Adrian Lukis)
living in the Suffolk countryside and their elderly Ukranian helper
(West), a man who thought he had left his past behind him when he
came to England after the Second World War. Joe
Harmston directs.

West’s
recent stage credits include King Lear at the Old
Vic, Alan Bennett‘s The Old Country at the
Trafalgar Studios and Harold Pinter‘s The Lover/The
Collection at the Comedy Theatre. He has also appeared in
many films and television dramas including Iris,
Cry Freedom and the BBC adaptation of Dickens’s
Bleak House.

Also
appearing are
Carolyn Backhouse, James Simmons and Anthony Houghton. The play
will feature video testimonies from Vanessa Redgrave as Sister
Sophia and Steven Berkoff as
Nikita Fedorenko.

Caroline Langrishe was recently seen in Country
at the Southwark Playhouse and Hayfever
at the Chichester
Festival Theatre. Adrian Lukis‘s credits include the most recent RSC
production of The
Taming of the Shrew; the actor is best known from playing Sergeant
Douglas Wright in ITV drama The Bill.

South
Africa-born Harwood, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay of
The Pianist, wrote The Handyman
in 1996. Harmston
directed its world premiere
at the Chichester Festival Theatre that year, with Frank Finlay in
the lead role.

Harmston’s recent credits include The Father at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry and the UK tours of Lark Rise to Candleford and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

The
Handyman runs at the Clwyd
Theatr Cymru from 12
to 15 September; the Cheltenham
Everyman Theatre from 17
to 22 September; the Yvonne
Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, from
25 September to 6 October; the Cambridge
Arts Theatre from 8 to 13 October; Richmond Theatre from 15 to 20
October; the Malvern Festival Theatre from 22 to 27 October; and
the Oxford Playhouse from 29
October to 3 November.