Bradley Takes Quiz at Trafalgar for Summer 2008

Olivier Award winner David Bradley (pictured) will bring one-man black comedy The Quiz to the West End in June. It’s one of the highlights in the newly announced summer 2008 season in Trafalgar Studios 2, the smaller 100-seater in ATG’s two auditoria complex on Whitehall.

In The Quiz, Bradley has been performing ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ for too many years. It’s always been his dream to die on stage like Kean, Irving and Tommy Cooper. Is tonight the night to make the ultimate leap?

Written by Richard Crane and directed David Giles, The Quiz premiered last summer in Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park Theatre. It comes to Trafalgar Studios, where it runs from 17 to 28 June 2008, as part of a wider tour which sees it opening at Kingston’s Rose Theatre on 28 May and also visiting Norwich, Eastbourne, Bath and Guildford, where its new schedule concludes on 5 July.

Bradley won the 1991 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in King Lear. His more recent stage credits – at the National, RSC, Donmar Warehouse and elsewhere – include The Caretaker, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, The Night Season, Titus Andronicus, Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya. His screen credits include Hot Fuzz and the Harry Potter films, in which he plays caretaker Argus Filch.

Following The Quiz, the Trafalgar Studios 2 line-up continues with: I, Lear (21 July to 17 August), a comedy two-hander covering the entirety of British theatre; and the return of children’s improvised show Professor Bumm’s Story Machine (22 July to 16 August), seen at the venue two years ago.

Coinciding with the Edinburgh Fringe north of the border, Trafalgar Studios 2 will also host an alternative festival, The Mad Fringe, a fundraising event in aid of AIDS support charity Theatrecares. It will run from 18 to 23 August with big names in cabaret, comedy, theatre and music to be announced.

Ahead of the newly announced production, Saskia Reeves and Rafe Spall star in Paul Robinson’s production of Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye from tonight (22 April) until 17 May (See News, 27 Mar 2008), and are followed by comedian Phill Jupitus making his West End acting debut in the premiere of Nick Reed’s new comedy Lifecoach from 20 May to 14 June 2008 (See News, 13 Mar 2008).

– by Terri Paddock