Waste - Almeida Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
SAMUEL West will direct Harley Granville Barker’s Waste, which runs at the Almeida Theatre from September 25 to November 15, 2008. Casting will be announced shortly.
Radical independent politician Henry Trebell is persuaded to join the Conservative Party in order to champion his Bill to Disestablish the Church of England and to use its funds to finance a vast education programme. But a liaison with a married woman, who dies after aborting their child, brings private scandal into the political arena.
Written in 1907 but banned by the Lord Chamberlain, Waste was first produced almost thirty year’s later – in 1936 at the Westminster Theatre.
West’s directing credits include The Romans In Britain, Insignificance and As You Like It, all for Sheffield Theatres where he was Artistic Director; Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice which transferred from the Menier Chocolate Factory to Trafalgar Studios; Cosi Fan Tutte for the English National Opera; and Three Woman and a Piano Tuner for the Minerva Theatre and Hampstead Theatre.
As an actor his numerous stage credits include Betrayal (Donmar Warehouse); A Number and Much Ado About Nothing (Sheffield Theatres); Doctor Faustus and The Master and Margarita (Chichester Festival Theatre); the title roles in Hamlet and Richard II, both directed by Stephen Pimlott for the Royal Shakespeare Company; and The Sea and Arcadia (National Theatre).
On screen West has appeared in Iris, Jane Eyre and Persuasion (film); Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, Foyle’s War and Cambridge Spies (TV).
Actor, producer, director, dramatist and Shakespearean scholar, Harley Granville Barker was born in London in 1877 and died in Paris in 1946. In the early 1900s, he produced three seasons of work at the Royal Court Theatre where he subsequently directed ten plays by George Bernard Shaw. His other plays include The Voysey Inheritance, The Marrying of Ann Leete and The Madras House.
Tickets: £6 – £29.50, concessions available.
For more information call the box office on 020 7359 4404 (24 hour) or visit the website.