Noda & Teevan Create Diver During Soho Summer

Following their first collaboration in 2006 with The Bee at Soho Theatre (See News, 13 Apr 2006), Japanese director Hideki Noda will reunite with British dramatist Colin Teevan and actress Kathryn Hunter to create a new physical theatre piece, The Diver, which premieres in June as part of the new writing theatre’s summer schedule. Other season highlights include new work by Philip Ridley and Shelagh Stephenson and the National Youth Theatre’s now-annual residency.

The new schedule kicks off this month with the premiere of Philip Ridley‘s new play Piranha Heights, which runs from 21 May to 14 June 2008 (previews from 15 May), directed by Soho artistic director Lisa Goldman, who premiered Ridley’s Leaves of Glass at the theatre last year (See News, 3 Apr 2008). It stars Luke Treadaway, Matthew Wait, Nicholas Tennant, Jade Williams and John McMillan. In their dead mother’s flat, two brothers argue about the truth of their childhood – when the next generation crashes in, the youngsters channel their creative forces towards terror.

Shelagh Stephenson’s The Long Road arrives, care of Synergy Theatre and the Forgiveness Profject, from 19 May to 5 June 2008, directed by Esther Baker. Evolving out of a period of research with victims, the play focuses on a family struggling to find meaning after their teenange son is stabbed to death. The cast are: Denise Black (from TV’s Coronation Street), Alison Newman, Michael Elwynn, Michelle Tate and Stephen Webb.

The Soho Theatre production of The Diver, written by Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan, follows from 23 June to 12 July 2008 (previews from 19 June). The play combines the 1,000-year-old Japanese Tales of Genji, traditional Noh theatre and a real-life murder case in which a woman killed her lover and his family. In the cast, Kathryn Hunter is joined by Glyn Pritchard and Harry Gostelow.

German/British collaborative Gob Squad presents its new piece God Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good), inspired by Andy Warhol’s 1965 film Kitchen, from 21 to 27 July. And Clean Break theatre company, which works with women affected by the criminal justice system, stages Chloe Moss’ This Wide Night, directed by Lucy Morrison, from 30 July to 9 August.

The summer theatre schedule concludes with the National Youth Theatre’s residency from 12 August to 13 September, during which NYT will present four new plays in rep: Shelley Silas’ Eating Ice-Cream on Gaza Beach, Jane Bodie’s Out of Me, James Graham’s Tory Boyz and Tolstoy’s Resurrection, adapted and directed by Adam Meggido. A late-night programme of comedy, cabaret and music runs alongside the theatre programme.

– by Terri Paddock