Fiennes’ NT Oedipus Opens 15 Oct, Pitmen Return

Jonathan Kent’s long-scheduled National Theatre production of Oedipus, starring Ralph Fiennes (pictured) in the title role, has now confirmed its dates and will open in rep in the NT Olivier on 15 October 2008 (previews from 8 October), initially booking until 16 November (See News, 2 Oct 2007). Public booking will open on 23 July.

In Sophocles ancient Greek tragedy, in a new version by Frank McGuinness, the people of Thebes look to Oedipus to lift a terrible curse from them and their city. He consults the oracle and learns that he must root out the late king’s murderer. But his relentless interrogation of one man after another leads inexorably, and in the space of a single day, to his own savage conclusion.

Fiennes is joined in the cast by Clare Higgins as Oedipus mother Jocasta and Alan Howard as the blind prophet Teiresias (See News, 27 Mar 2008). Also confirmed are Patrick Brennan, Steven Page, Christopher Saul, David Shaw-Parker and Malcolm Storry. Oedipus is designed by Paul Brown, Kent’s long-term collaborator at the Almeida and, more recently, the Theatre Royal Haymarket season, with lighting by Neil Austin, sound by Paul Groothuis and music by Jonathan Dove.

Other new productions to join the National’s programme for the new booking period, running from August to November 2008, are Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce, DV8’s To Be Straight With You, a double bill of Harold Pinter’s A Slight Ache and Landscape and, as reported last week (See News, 4 Jul 2008), Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan’s dance theatre piece In-I.

There will also be return seasons for; Katie Mitchell’s devised multimedia piece Waves based on the Virginia Woolf novel, which premiered in 2006 in the NT Cotteloe, where it returns from 20 August to 9 September 2008; and further ahead, as previous tipped (See The Goss, 10 Jun 2008), Lee Hall’s critically acclaimed play The Pitmen Painters, which recently finished a sell-out stint in the NT Cottesloe and will move into the larger NT Lyttelton from 27 January to 17 February 2009.

Ahead of Hall’s play in the Lyttelton, DV8’s physical theatre piece To Be Straight With You, conceived and directed by Lloyd Newsom, will run from 29 October to 15 November 2008. And the Pinter double bill, starring Simon Russell Beale and Clare Higgins as a middle-aged couple in both, will run from 13 September to 1 October 2008. The actors were initially scheduled to perform Pinter’s 1961 short three-hander A Slight Ache for only handful of early evening dates this month and next. That piece will now be newly paired with Pinter’s 1968 series of monologues Landscape.

Oedipus, In-I and To Be Straight With You will all offer 3.00pm Sunday matinees as part of their performance schedules, as with the return season of War Horse, which, on 21 September 2008, will be the first production ever performed on a Sunday at the National (See News, 22 May 2007).

Commenting on the introduction of regular Sunday programming, NT artistic director Nicholas Hytner said: “It’s long been our ambition to open the National on Sundays, joining all our neighbours on the South Bank who open their doors throughout the weekend. This is excellent news for audiences, particularly those who find it difficult to come here during the traditional working week. We are immensely grateful to our NT company of staff and actors, and to the theatre unions Equity, BECTU and the MU, whose cooperation has been vital in enabling us to take this important step.”

– by Terri Paddock