Celebrity Night at Café Red - Trafalgar Studios
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
OSIP Theatre is presenting Celebrity Night at Café Red, written and directed by Lily Bevan, at Trafalgar Studios 2 from September 20 to October 6, 2012.
It’s Saturday night at Café Red, the Frenchest chain restaurant in town with its plastic onions, checked tablecloths and rustic provencal paraphernalia.
But this is a night of change, of fresh ideas – visiting Celebrity Chef Extraordinaire, Roly Ryan, is in the kitchen whisking up trouble. How can he know his diners have also brought their own unusual ingredients to the table?
Described as a tasty black comedy, Celebrity Night at Café Red promises an evening of love, awkwardness, danger and mime and features an ensemble cast of eight actors and two Le Coq trained physical performers.
They are Dominic Burdess (as Maitre D’), Alys Metcalf (Waitress) Mike Wozniak (Roly), Jeany Spark (Lucy), Lorna Beckett (Lizzy), Victoria Lloyd (Brianca), James Rastall (Ben), Sarah Lambie (Sabine), Leo Staar (Harry) and Lily Bevan (Hillary).
Lily Bevan is a writer, director and performer. She is Artistic Director of Osip Theatre and has previously written Stephen and The Sexy Partridge (Trafalgar Studios), Avocado (King’s Head Theatre) and A Stab In The Dark (Latitude Theatre Festival). She is currently working with writer/actress Emma Thompson developing a new screenplay.
Dominic Burdess’ stage credits include Ivan in Delirium (Theatre O, Abbey Dublin and the Barbican), Gepetto in Pinocchio (Theatre Royal, Northampton), Nano the Dwarf in Volpone (Manchester Royal Exchange) and Jonathan in Arsenic and Old Lace (Derby Playhouse).
His other theatre work includes directing After Mikuyu (Oval House Theatre), clown consultant on Ayckbourn’s Drowning on Dry Land (Salisbury Playhouse), and devising/development work with the Young Vic, The Penny Dreadfuls, the Verbatim Symposium 2006, Jamworks, Company F.Z, and Cirque du Soleil. He is currently working on two shows with Theatre O at the National Theatre Studio and the Young Vic.
As Artistic Director of Blow Up Theatre, Burdess co-created the Total Theatre Award-winning clown duo The Illusion Brothers and Somebody to Love, a mask play which toured internationally and was filmed at the Young Vic and released on DVD by EMI/Parlophone. He also co-wrote, directed and performed in the film The Mourners, which won Best Screenplay at the San Francisco Short Film Festival 2003.
Co-founder of Viscera Theatre Company, Alys Metcalf’s stage credits include working with Pimlico Opera Company in Les Miserables, The Journey with Viscera Theatre Company, and Oranges on the Brighton Line at the Old Vic Tunnels.
Mike Wozniak is an award-winning comedian, writer and performer, whose comedy awards include Best New Show Award for The Golden Lizard at the Leicester Comedy Festival, Time Out New Act of the Year and Amused Moose Laugh Off Winner. As well as The Golden Lizard, his stage credits include Mike Wozniak, One Man Show (Soho Theatre), Comedy Rush (Shaftesbury Theatre) and Egg and Spoon (Edinburgh Festival).
Jeany Spark’s theatre credits include Waste (Almeida Theatre), Twelfth Night (Theatre Royal, Norwich), Moscow Live (High Tide) and A Voyage Round My Father (Salisbury Playhouse). On television, she has appeared in Wallander, A Touch Of Cloth, Black Mirror, Sherlock, Death In Paradise, Law and Order: UK, Hattie, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Lewis.
Lorna Beckett’s stage work includes Miss Lilly Gets Boned Or The Loss of All Elephant Elders, Avocado, Stephen and the Sexy Partridge and A Stab in the Dark (all for Osip Theatre), Twelfth Night and Masters Are You Mad? (Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Sheffield Crucible). Her screen credits include Resurrecting the Streetwalker, The Tell Tale Heart and MI High.
Victoria Lloyd’s theatre credits include Filumena and Measure for Measure (Almeida Theatre), Love’s Labour’s Lost (Lamb House), Mine (Finborough Theatre) and Fool for Love (George Bernard Shaw Theatre).
James Rastall’s screen credits include Marchlands, Vera, Prisoners’ Wives and the forthcoming comedy Switch, opposite Phoebe Fox and Caroline Quentin.
Sarah Lambie’s most recent theatre roles include Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest (English Theatre, Frankfurt), Valentine in Twelfth Night and Coraline in Masters Are You Mad? (Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre, Chester) and the Maitre D’ in a troupe of improvising comedy waiters.
Leo Staar’s theatre credits include After The Dance and Hamlet (National Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham’s Theatre). On screen, he has appeared in Dancing on the Edge and Dark Matters.
Co-produced by Osip Theatre and Lucy Pattison, with assistant direction from Hamish MacDougall, Celebrity Night at Café Red has lighting design by Christopher Nairne, sound design by Emma Laxton, set design by Giuseppe Belli and costume design by Emma Belli.
Tickets: £15 – £24.50 – available from the box office on 0844 871 7627 or online at www.trafalgar-studios.com/.
Times: Thursday to Saturday at 7.45pm, Saturday matinee at 4pm, press night (September 21) at 7pm.
Running Time: 1 hour 10 minutes.