National Theatre - January to April 2016
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE NATIONAL Theatre has announced its programme for the first four months of 2016 and it includes Sarah Kane’s Cleansed directed by Katie Mitchell; Annie Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flick directed by Sam Gold; and in the Temporary Theatre, Iphgenia In Splott, The Solid Life of Sugar Water and the return of Brainstorm.
The Travelex £15 Tickets season continues with Yaël Farber directing Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry and The Suicide by Suhayla El-Bushra, after Erdman, directed by Nadia Fall.
However, the season opens with August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Directed by Dominic Cooke, it opens in the Lyttelton Theatre on February 2 (previews from January 26) before continuing in repertoire until May 18, 2016.
Chicago, 1927. In a recording studio on the city’s South Side, a battle of wills is raging. Ma Rainey, Mother of the Blues, uses every trick in the book to fight her record producers for control of her music. Hardened by years of ill-treatment and bad deals, she’s determined that ‘Black Bottom’, the song that bears her name, will be recorded her way. But Levee, the band’s swaggering young trumpet player, plans to catapult the band into the jazz age. His ambition puts them all in danger.
Inspired by the real-life Blues legend and infused with her music, August Wilson’s play speaks powerfully of a struggle for self-determination against overwhelming odds.
Sharon D Clarke (as Ma Rainey) leads a cast that also includes Clint Dyer, O-T Fagbenle, Tunji Lucas, Lucian Msamati and Giles Terera.
In 2013, Sharon D Clarke won an Olivier Award for her performance in The Amen Corner at the National Theatre, where she has also appeared in Everyman, 50 Years on Stage and Guys and Dolls. Her West End work includes the original cast of We Will Rock You, Porgy and Bess, Ghost The Musical, Hairspray, Chicago, The Lion King and Rent. Her TV credits include City, The Shadow Line and The Singing Detective.
Dominic Cooke is an Associate Director of the National Theatre. His production of Caryl Churchill’s new play Here We Go opens in the Lyttelton in November. In 2011, he directed The Comedy of Errors for the National.
He was Artistic Director of the Royal Court from 2007 – 2013, where his productions included Caryl Churchill’s Identical Twins, This is a Chair, Seven Jewish Children and Ding Dong the Wicked; plus The Low Road, In the Republic of Happiness, Choir Boy, Chicken Soup with Barley, Clybourne Park, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, Wig Out!, Now or Later, The Pain and The Itch and Other People.
For the BBC, he has directed the forthcoming The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses; while his production of Teddy Ferrara is currently at the Donmar Warehouse.
August Wilson’s (1945 – 2005) many plays include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences and The Piano Lesson, as well as Jitney and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will be designed by Ultz, with lighting by Charles Balfour, music by Tim Sutton, movement by Coral Messam and sound by Paul Arditti.