Theatre News

D’Amour’s Detroit Comes to NT Cottesloe in 2012

| London's West End |

14 November 2011

Lisa D’Amour‘s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Detroit will transfer to the NT Cottesloe next year, the National Theatre have today (13 November 2011) confirmed.

The play, which recently played an acclaimed run at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, will be brought to the stage by Austin Pendleton, who helmed the play’s Chicago production, with an all-new British cast.

Set in a suburb outside a mid-sized American city, Detroit sees Ben and Mary fire up the grill to welcome the new neighbours who’ve moved into the long-empty house next door.

The fledgling friendship soon veers out of control — with unexpected consequences. Shining a light on the middle class ‘American Dream’, the play is billed as “looking at what happens when we open ourselves up to something new.”

Detroit follows Tracy Letts‘ Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play August: Osage County which came to the NT Lyttelton from Steppenwolf in November 2008. That production saw Tony Award-winning ensemble members Deanna Dunagan, Rondi Reed transfer their Broadway
performances as well as director Anna D Shapiro and designer Todd Rosenthal, both of
whom also won Tony Awards for their work on the production.

August: Osage County marked the first time Steppenwolf had been seen on the South Bank since their 1989 production of The Grapes of Wrath.

Full dates for the production’s London run have still to be confirmed.

D’Amour’s other plays include Hide Town (2006), Anna Bella Eema (2003), Obie Award–winning Nita and Zita (2003) and The Cataract (2004).