Taken at Midnight transfers to West End
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
CURRENTLY enjoying a sold-out season in Chichester, Jonathan Church’s world premiere production of Mark Hayhurst’s new play, Taken At Midnight, will transfer to the West End – to the Theatre Royal Haymarket where it will run for a limited season from January 15 to March 14, 2015.
Reprising her role as Irmgard will be Penelope Wilton, who was last seen in the West End playing Gertrude in Michael Grandage’s 2009 production of Hamlet, which also starred Jude Law – the final production in the Donmar’s year-long West End season at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Taken At Midnight is set in 1931 when Hans Litten is one of the most celebrated lawyers in Berlin, famed for his brilliant mind and the rhetorical flair with which he defends those fighting back against the rapidly growing Nazi movement. So, when he calls Herr Hitler as star witness in the trial of a band of murderous SA men, the politician feels the full force of Litten’s intellect, wit and courage.
It arouses in Hitler a feeling he can’t abide or forget. Two years later, on the night of the Reichstag fire, Litten is arrested. He is held without trial, beaten, tortured, and threatened as ‘an enemy of human society’.
As Litten disappears into the Nazi system, his indomitable mother, Irmgard, confronts his captors and, at enormous personal risk, fights to secure his release.
Taken At Midnight explores Irmgard’s struggle, her son’s resistance and the heroic battle of the weak against the powerful, truth against lies and mothers against murderers.
As well as Hamlet, Penelope Wilton’s other work for the Donmar Warehouse includes John Gabriel Borkman, The Little Foxes, A Kind of Alaska and Enid Bagnold’s dark comedy The Chalk Garden, for which she (and her co-star Margaret Tyzack) received the Evening Standard Award for Best Actress. Elsewhere, her credits include Women Beware Women (RSC) and The House of Bernada Alba (National Theatre).
Wilton can currently be seen playing Isobel Crawley in the popular period drama Downton Abbey. Her other screen credits include Doctor Who, Bob and Rose, Victoria and Albert and Wives and Daughters (TV); The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The History Boys, Match Point, Pride and Prejudice, Calendar Girls and Iris (film).
Staged as part of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Hidden Histories season, Taken at Midnight was commissioned by commercial producer Mark Goucher, and written with Penelope Wilton in mind. The play’s author, Mark Hayhurst, also wrote 37 Days, a major factual drama series for the BBC’s WW1 Centenary in 2014.
Further casting for the West End transfer has yet to be announced.
The West End transfer of Richard Bean’s new play, Great Britain, starring Lucy Punch as Paige Britain, continues at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until January 10, 2015.