Cillian Murphy in Grief is the Thing With Feathers to run at Barbican in London
© Tim Walker
Grief is The Thing With Feathers, Enda Walsh's hit adaptation of Max Porter's novel starring Cillian Murphy, is to make its UK premiere as part of the Barbican Theatre's new season, it has been announced.
The show originally ran in Galway and Dublin earlier this year and is set in a London flat where two young boys face the sadness of their mother's sudden death and are visited by a crow. The piece is a co-production between Wayward Productions and Complicité and runs between 25 March and 13 April. Murphy plays Dad in the piece which also stars David Evans (Older Boy / Younger Boy) Taighen O'Callaghan (Older Boy) Felix Warren (Younger Boy) and Hattie Morahan as Mum
Walsh appears again in the Barbican's new season, with an immersive theatre installation entitled Rooms in April, which is five meticulously detailed rooms housing clues to the characters once confined within their walls. The room's narratives are performed by Irish actors including Niall Buggy, Charlie Murphy, Donal O'Kelly, Paul Reid and Eileen Walsh. This will be the first time all five rooms will be seen together.
As previously announced, Ivo van Hove's The Damned (Les Damnés) arrives in London at the Barbican in June. The piece is an adaptation of Luchino Visconti's screenplay about a corrupt family of industrialists who collude with the Nazis.
The UK premiere of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (formerly known as Toneelgroep Amsterdam)'s Medea, directed by Simon Stone will arrive between 6 and 9 March. Performed in Dutch, with English surtitles, Marieke Heebink stars in the lead role.
Elsewhere in the theatre line-up, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, by Cheek By Jowl and Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre makes its UK premiere between 5 and 8 June. Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod collaborate on the farce, which is performed in Russian.
Moscow Pushkin Drama will stage three UK premieres in February, with The Cherry Orchard being directed by Vladimir Mirzoyev; The Good Person of Szechwan directed by Yury Butusov and performed by Alexandra Ursulyak and Mother's Field, a non-verbal adaptation of Russian writer, Chingiz Aitmatov's novella. Sergei Zemlyansky directs.
The London International Mime Festival also returns to the venue in January with four shows including Father (Vader) from company Peeping Tom directed by Fanck Charier (30 January to 2 February). Gecko come to the Barbican as part of the line-up with The Wedding between 24 and 26 January. Le Théâtre de L'Entrouvert performs Anywhere in the Pit theatre which also houses the world premiere of Ursula Martinez's A Family Outing which runs 27 to 30 March, in which a mother and daughter focus on their relationship.
The creative team behind A Disappearing Number, Marcus du Sautoy and Victoria Gould will also perform I is a Strange Loop, about mortality, consciousness and artificial life in March. Elsewhere, Avalanche: A Love Story is a dramatisation of Julie Leigh's memoir, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks between 27 April and 1 May.
