Theatre News

Gambon & Atkins Fall for Nunn at 70-seat Jermyn Street Theatre

28 May 2012

London’s tiny Jermyn Street Theatre will host three of theatreland’s biggest names later this year when it presents a rare revival of Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall.

Running from 11 October to 3 November 2012 (previews from 9 October), the production will be directed by Trevor Nunn and star Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon.

The play, which has never been seen in London before, charts the journey of old and unwieldy Mrs Rooney (Atkins) as she drags herself towards a railway station on a Saturday lunchtime to meet her blind husband (Gambon) on his way back from the office to guide him home.

Along the way she passes the time of day with a man with a dung cart and a man with a bicycle. A third man with a motor-car offers her a lift and a church-struck spinster helps her up the station steps.

Trevor Nunn, whose recent credits include The Tempest starring Ralph Fiennes and the multi award-winning Flare Path, said: “The Jermyn Street Theatre is the perfect intimate space for this unique project, as I attempt to recreate the studio circumstances for which the play was written. Most excitingly, this rare staging of a little known Beckett masterpiece has attracted the involvement of two world famous actors, Eileen Atkins and Michael Gambon.”

Gene David Kirk, artistic director of Jermyn Street Theatre added: “This is a quadruple coup for Jermyn Street Theatre. A rare staging by one of the most influential figures of twentieth century theatre directed by one of the most lauded directors of his generation and starring two of the greatest actors working today. Any one of those ingredients would have been massive for a theatre of our size but to have them together makes us immensely proud and excited.”

All That Fall will be Sir Michael Gambon’s fourth Beckett play presented in the capital in recent years, following Krapp’s Last Tape in 2010, the dialogue-free Eh, Joe (also transferred from the Gate) in 2006 and Endgame, with Lee Evans in 2004. His other recent stage credits include No Man’s Land, Celebration, Henry IV, The Caretaker, A Number, The Unexpected Man and Troilus and Cressida.

Multiple Olivier Award winner Dame Eileen Atkins was last seen in the West End playing Margot in The Female of the Species at the Vaudeville (2008). Her many other stage credits include Cymbeline, The Unexpected Man, Honour, The Killing of Sister George, A Delicate Balance, Vita and Virginia and, on Broadway, Doubt.