Athletics Coach Presents 1936 at the Arcola

McNab first made his name in the world of sport as coach to
the British Olympic bobsleigh team and the silver-medal winning England squad
in 1992’s Rugby World Cup. His 1982 novel Flanagan’s Run has been translated into 15 languages and he was
technical director on the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.

1936 will be directed by Jenny Lee,
artistic director of Attic Theatre Company, the company producing the show. It
tells the story of the tensions in the Nazi party and amongst members of the
International Olympic Committee in the lead-up to a Games fraught with
controversy. The Nazis, convinced of the superiority of the Aryan race, allowed only Aryan sportsmen and women to compete for
Germany and Hitler privately expressed his anger and embarrassment at the success of the black
American athlete Jessie Owens, who won four gold medals at the Games. President
Franklin J Roosevelt famously did not send Owens a congratulatory telegram
following his medal wins, or invite him to the White House on his return to the
USA.

The cast of nine will include Jim Creighton (seen most recently in Trevor
Nunn’s Chichester production of Cyrano de Bergerac), David Baron (who appeared in
Afterlife at the National Theatre in 2008) and Rolan Bell
(Theo in EastEnders).