National Theatre - October 2015 to January 2016
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE National Theatre has announced its programme for the coming months and it includes William Shakespeare’s As You Like It; Harley Granville-Barker’s Waste; new plays by Wallace Shawn and Caryl Churchill; wonder.land, a new musical by Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini; and two productions for young and family audiences.
However, the season opens with Ben Power’s adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Husbands & Sons. Directed by Marianne Elliott and starring Anne-Marie Duff as Lizzie Holroyd, it runs in the Dorfman Theatre from October 27, 2015 (previews from October 19) to January 19, 2016, with additional performances to be announced.
On the cracked border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire stands the village of Eastwood. The women of the village, wives and mothers, struggle to hold their families and their own souls together in the shadow of the great Brinsley pit.
Husbands & Sons interweaves three of D H Lawrence’s greatest dramas (The Daughter-in-Law, A Collier’s Friday Night and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd), and plays them simultaneously. Describing the world he came from with fierce tenderness, Lawrence evokes a now-vanished world of manual labour and working class pride.
The cast also includes Joe Armstrong, Matthew Barker, John Biggins, Cassie Bradley, Louise Brealey, Susan Brown, Julia Ford, Johnny Gibbon, Tala Gouveia, Lloyd Hutchinson, Philip McGinley, Martin Marquez, Katherine Pearce, Josie Walker and Sue Wallace.
Ben Power is Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre, where his adaptations have included Euripides’ Medea and Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean. He has also worked as dramaturg on over twenty productions at the venue. For Headlong Theatre, his adaptations included Six Characters in Search of an Author and Faustus with Rupert Goold and Paradise Lost.
Power’s screenplays include the forthcoming The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses for the BBC. For the first series of The Hollow Crown, he adapted Henry V and Richard II, which won the RTS Award for Best Drama and was nominated for a BAFTA.
Anne-Marie Duff’s National Theatre work includes Strange Interlude and Saint Joan, for which she won Best Actress at the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2008 and was nominated for an Olivier. Her other recent theatre work includes Cause Célèbre (Old Vic) and the title role in Berenice (Donmar Warehouse). Duff’s many television appearances include the title role in Elizabeth the Virgin Queen and Shameless. She will appear in the feature film Suffragettes written by Abi Morgan and due for release in October.
Marianne Elliott is an Associate Director at the National Theatre where her work includes The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (winner of seven Olivier Awards including Best Director and five Tony Awards including Best Director), Rules for Living, The Light Princess, Port, Season’s Greetings, Women Beware Women, All’s Well That Ends Well, Mrs Affleck, Harper Regan, Saint Joan with Anne-Marie Duff (Olivier Award for Best Revival, South Bank Show Award for Theatre), Thérèse Raquin, Pillars of the Community (Evening Standard Award for Best Director) and War Horse (co-directed with Tom Morris, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play).
Husbands & Sons will be designed by Bunny Christie, with lighting by Lucy Carter, video design by Tal Rosner, movement by Scott Graham, music by Adrian Sutton, sound by Ian Dickinson and fight direction by Kate Waters.
A co-production with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Husbands & Sons will play in Manchester from February 19 to March 19, 2016.