Old Vic - September 2010 to June 2011
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
LONDON’S Old Vic Theatre has announced its programme for the forthcoming season, Kevin Spacey’s seventh as Artistic Director, and it includes Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre as part of the centenary celebrations of the playwright’s birth; Feydeau’s farce A Flea in Her Ear; and Noel Coward’s Design for Living.
The season opens with the first major London revival in more than 15 years of Coward’s Design for Living, which runs from September 15 (previews from September 3) to November 27, 2010.
The play, written in 1932, focuses on three egotistical, beguiling and self-absorbed characters – Gilda, Otto, and Leo – who challenge the moral boundaries of relationships.
Anthony Page directs a cast that includes Lisa Dillon, Tom Burke and Andrew Scott.
Lisa Dillon‘s theatre credits include Under the Blue Sky (Duke of York’s Theatre); Present Laughter and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (National Theatre); Period of Adjustment and Hedda Gabler (Almeida Theatre); Othello (Royal Shakespeare Company); The Master Builder (Albery Theatre) which was directed by Anthony Page and for which she won the Ian Charleson Award and the Critics’ Circle Most Promising Newcomer Award; The Cherry Orchard; As You Like It; and Iphigenia.
Dillon will also star in the season’s second production A Flea in Her Ear, which runs from December 14, 2010 (previews from December 4) to March 5, 2011.
Richard Eyre will direct John Mortimer’s version of Georges Feydeau’s 1907 classic farce, which was last performed at the Old Vic for the National Theatre in 1966. Tom Hollander also stars in this comedy of errors set against a backdrop of jealousy, misunderstandings and confrontation.
When Raymonde (Dillon) suspects her husband Victor (Hollander) of infidelity, she enlists the help of a friend to set a trap resulting in mistaken identities, bruised egos and comic disaster.
Read more about A Flea In Her Ear.
The season concludes with Rattigan’s final play Cause Célèbre, which runs from March 29 (previews from March 17) to June 11, 2011.
Cause Célèbre is based on the true story of Alma Rattenbury who went on trial with her 18-year-old lover for the murder of her husband. Condemned by the public more for her seduction of a young boy than for any involvement she may have had in her husband’s death, Alma’s fate is left in the hands of the socially and sexually repressed jury forewoman, Edith.
Cause Célèbre is directed by Thea Sharrock, who will be making her Old Vic debut. Casting has not yet been announced.