Jez Butterworth’s Multi Award Winning Jerusalem Returns To London For Strictly Limited 14 Week Season

MARK RYLANCE TO REPRISE CELEBRATED ROLE OF JOHNNY “ROOSTER” BYRON DIRECTED BY IAN RICKSON

Ian Rickson’s Royal Court Theatre production of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem will return to London’s West End for a strictly limited 14 week engagement hot on the heels of a triumphant Broadway run. Mark Rylance will reprise his Olivier and Tony award-wining performance as Johnny “Rooster” Byron, directed by Ian Rickson. Previewing at the Apollo Theatre from 8 October 2011, with press night on 17 October, Jerusalem is booking until 14 January 2012. Designs are by Ultz, with lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin, sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph and music by Stephen Warbeck. Jerusalem is produced in the West End by Royal Court Theatre Productions and by Sonia Friedman Productions.

Jerusalem is a comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land. On St George’s Day, the morning of the local county fair, Johnny Byron is a wanted man. The Council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants his dad to take him to the fair and Troy Whitworth wants to give him a serious kicking.

Jez Butterworth’s award-winning play returns to the West End following record-breaking sold-out runs at the Royal Court and the Apollo Theatres in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Jerusalem is currently enjoying a critically acclaimed extended run at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway where it plays until 21 August 2011. Jerusalem has now won over ten theatre awards internationally, culminating in the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Play going to Mark Rylance earlier this year.

The 2011 West End cast includes Mark Rylance (Johnny “Rooster” Byron) and Mackenzie Crook (Ginger) as well as Max Baker (Wesley), Alan David (The Professor), Aimeé-Ffion Edwards (Phaedra), Johnny Flynn (Lee), Geraldine Hughes (Dawn), Danny Kirrane (Davey), Charlotte Mills (Tanya), Sarah Moyle (Ms Fawcett) and Harvey Robinson (Mr Parsons).

Jerusalem will offer 20 best price seats at £10 each, which will go on sale from the Box Office, in person only, from 10am on the day of each performance.

Multi award-winning actor Mark Rylance was last in the West End playing Valere in La Bête at the Comedy Theatre, a role he reprised on Broadway. Before the West End run of Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre, he was recently on stage playing Hamm in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame at the Duchess Theatre and Robert in Boeing-Boeing at the Comedy Theatre and on Broadway where he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play. His other theatre work includes many productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Glasgow Citizens as well as True West for the Donmar Warehouse, Bloody Poetry for the Royal Court and The Maids for Shared Experience and Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing directed by Matthew Warchus, for which he won the Olivier Award for Best Actor. As Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre his work as an actor included the title roles in Henry V and Hamlet as well as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra and Olivia in Twelfth Night. His film and television work includes The Other Boleyn Girl, Prospero’s Books, Angels and Insects, Leonardo and David Kelly in C4’s The Government Inspector for which he won the BAFTA Best Actor Award.

Jez Butterworth’s first play Mojo opened at the Royal Court in 1995 and subsequently won five drama awards including the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards for Most Promising Playwright and the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. He returned to the Royal Court in 2002 with The Night Heron and The Winterling in 2006. His films Mojo, starring Harold Pinter, and Birthday Girl, starring Nicole Kidman, were both shown at the Venice Film Festival prior to general release. In 2007 he received the E.M. Forster Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2009 his play Parlour Song received its British premiere at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson. 2010 saw the international release of his feature film Fair Game starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.

Ian Rickson’s most recent West End credits include Harold Pinter’s Betrayal which completes its run at the Comedy Theatre on 20 August and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour. He was Artistic Director of the Royal Court from 1998-2006 where his many productions included Krapp’s Last Tape which he also directed for BBC4, Fallout which he also directed as a film for Channel 4 and The Weir and Mojo both of which transferred to the West End and Broadway. He has directed Jez Butterworth’s The Winterling, The Night Heron, Mojo and Parlour Song as well as Jerusalem. For the National Theatre he has directed The Hothouse and The Day I Stood Still.

Release issued by: Premier PR

LINKS

Book tickets to Jerusalem at the Apollo Theatre starring Mark Rylance

Jerusalem tickets at the Apollo Theatre starring Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance returns to London following his triumphant, Tony Award-winning run as hellraiser Johnny Byron in Jez Butteworth’s acclaimed play Jerusalem, directed by Ian Rickson. Also starring Mackenzie Crook.

Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow tips Phoebe Fox for the top

I’m happy to see that Phoebe Fox is featured in Screen International’s annual Stars of Tomorrow report this week.

Whilst watching Anya Reiss’s excellent new play The Acid Test in May at the Royal Court, I was not alone in getting that tingle-down-the-spine feeling over Fox’s performance.

A recent RADA graduated, Fox’s next job is There Is A War at the National Theatre, part of their season of short plays in the National’s newly opened back-stage venue Paintframe.

Fox tells Screen International that she has ambitions to work in film as well as theatre. I’d say that this is a pretty safe bet: watching her performance in The Acid Test reminded me of the first time I saw Carey Mulligan act, in a read-through for My Boy Jack in 2007.

Also good to see that Fox’s fellow co-star in The Acid Test Vanessa Kirby is on the list, along with Robert Emms, who starred as Albert Narracott in War Horse at the New London Theatre and also features in Steven Spielberg’s up-and-coming film, and Sebastian Armesto, who recently appeared in Rocket to the Moon and A Woman Killed With Kindness at the National Theatre.

LINKS

Screen International Stars of Tomorrow

 

Chicken Soup With Barley And The Village Bike Extends At Royal Court Theatre

Dominic Cooke’s revival of Arnold Wesker’s play Chicken Soup with Barley will extend for an extra week until Saturday 16 July at the Royal Court Theatre in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

Penelope Skinner’s The Village Bike, which begin previews on 24 June (press night 1 July) has also been an extended for an extra week until Saturday 30 July in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.

Chicken Soup with Barley opened to four and five stars across the board last week, matching the record-breaking Clybourne Park’s biggest sales day last year.

The cast includes Samantha Spiro as Sarah Kahn with Jenna Augen, Steve Furst, Rebecca Gethings, Joel Gillman, Ilan Goodman, Harry Peacock, Tom Rosenthal, Danny Webb and Alexis Zegerman. It is directed by Dominic Cooke, designed by Ultz, with lighting by Charles Balfour, sound by Gareth Fry and music by Gary Yershon.

The kettle boils in 1936 as the fascists are marching. Tea is brewed in 1946, with disillusion in the air at the end of the war. Twenty years on, in 1956, as rumours spread of Hungarian revolution, the cup is empty.

Sarah Kahn, an East End Jewish mother, is a feisty political fighter and a staunch communist. Battling against the State and her shirking husband she desperately tries to keep her family together.

A moving and important state-of-the-nation play capturing the collapse of an ideology alongside the disintegration of a family.

The Village Bike is the Royal Court debut from Penelope Skinner. The cast includes Nicholas Burns, Phil Cornwell, Romola Garai, Alexandra Gilbreath, Dominic Rowan and Sasha Waddell. It is directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, designed by Helen Goddard with lighting by James Farncombe, sound by David McSeveney and video by Christophe Toumazou

‘Isn’t she gorgeous? Hardly been ridden. She’s been in the garage just gathering dust’

Becky’s pregnant and frustrated. But her husband is more interested in the baby manual than her new underwear so she turns to the porn stash under the bed. As the summer heats up, a brief encounter sends her speeding downhill towards reckless abandon.

A provocative and darkly comic look at fantasy and romance.

Age 18+. Contains scenes of a sexual nature.

The Village Bike is part of the Royal Court’s Jerwood New Playwrights programme, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation

Tickets available online at www.royalcourttheatre.com or from the Box Office on 020 7565 5000.

Release issued by: Royal Court press office

LINKS

Royal Court Theatre website

Tony Award presenters announced: Daniel Radcliffe, Catherine Zeta-Jones

The Tony Awards have announced the initial line-up of Broadway stars to present this year’s awards on 12 June 2011 in New York.

Joining host Neil Patrick Harris will be UK stars Daniel Radcliffe, who is currently starring in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying at Al Hirschfeld Theatre in New York, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won a Tony last year for her performance in the Menier Chocolate Factory production of A Little Night Music, Vanessa Redgrave, who recently starred in Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway, and legendary actress Angela Lansbury.

The British presenters will be joined by American stars Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson, Kelsey Grammer, Viola Davis,  James Earl Jones, Harry Connick Jr., Christie Brinkley, David Hyde Pierce, Marg Helgenberger, Matthew Broderick, Jim Parsons, Joel Grey, Patrick Wilson and Robert Morse.

A number of high-profile UK shows have been nominated in this year’s awards including the National Theatre’s War Horse and the Royal Court’s Jerusalem, both running for Best Play.

Jerusalem was also nominated for six other awards including Mark Rylance for leading actor in a play, Mackenzie Crook for featured actor in a play, lighting design, scenic design and sound design.

The awards will be presented on Sunday 12 June in a three hour live ceremony broadcast by CBS in the States.

LINKS

Tony Award nominations 2011
Book tickets to Broadway shows

Tony Award Nominations Announced: War Horse and Jerusalem compete for Best Play

The American Theatre Wing’s 2011 Tony Award nominations were announced today, Tuesday 3 May 2011. The nominations were presented by Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at Lincoln Center in New York.

A number of high-profile UK shows or London transfers did well in the nominations with the National Theatre’s War Horse and the Royal Court’s Jerusalem both running for Best Play.

Jerusalem was also nominated for six other awards including Mark Rylance for leading actor in a play, Mackenzie Crook for featured actor in a play, lighting design, scenic design and sound design.

Author of the play, Jez Butterworth, said: “I’m so thrilled that it’s working so well in the States. The Music Box Theatre is the most beautiful space I’ve been in. Being on Broadway is totally new experience for me, and I love that the atmosphere is so intimate.”

War Horse also received nominations for direction, scenic design, lighting design and sound design, and the creators of the puppets for the show, Handspring Puppet Company, will also receive a Special Tony Award.

Other London transfers nominated for awards include La Bete, which picked up nominations for Joanna Lumley and costume designer Mark Thompson, Kneehigh’s production of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, with two nominations including best performance by an actress in a leading role for Hannah Yelland, and Sister Act the Musical, which had its world premiere in London, and received five nominations including best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for Patina Miller.

Other Brits up for awards include Vanessa Redgrave for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy, Adam Godley for Anything Goes, Brian Bedford for The Importance of Being Earnest and Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia is competing in the best revival of a play category. He told BroadwayWorld that, “I feel pretty remarkable… The nomination for Best Revival is a deserved compliment to David Leveaux who directed Arcadia and to an exceptional company of actors.”

Daniel Radcliffe failed to secure a nomination for his starring role in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, although the revival did get eight nods including best revival of a musical, best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical for John Larroquette and actress for Tammy Blanchard, plus best direction and choreography nods for Rob Ashford, who is currently busy directing the London production of Shrek The Musical.

Big winners in the nominations were new musical The Book of Mormon by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, which received 14 nominations, the most of any show, The Scottsboro Boys with 12 nods and Anything Goes with nine nominations.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert received two nominations including Sydney and London star of the show Tony Sheldon for best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical. He said: “It’s extraordinary and so nice. I’ve been from the show since the first workshop, building the character. I’ve had so much input onto the show and my character and I feel so emotionally invested in the production”.

The awards will be presented on Sunday 12 June in a three hour live ceremony broadcast by CBS in the States.

LINKS

Tony Award nominations 2011
New York Times Tony nominations analysis
Book tickets to Broadway shows

Bruce Norris play Clybourne Park wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, which was staged at the Royal Court theatre last year and is currently playing at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London, has won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The prestigious award for drama was announced alongside the other prizes at a press conference today, 18 April 2011. The prizes will be awarded at a luncheon in late May in the Low Library on the Columbia University campus.

The Prize comes after the play has won every major Best Play award in the UK, including an Olivier Award, Evening Standard Theatre Award and South Bank Sky Arts Award.

The Pulitzer awards committee said that Clybourne Park was “a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America’s sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness.”

It beat nominated plays A Free Man of Color by John Guare and Detroit by Lisa D’Amour. Last year’s prize went to Broadway rock musical Next to Normal, with music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is awarded to a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life. The prize is $10,000.

Clybourne Park is running in London for a strictly limited season at the Wyndham’s Theatre, staring Sophie Thompson and Stephen Campbell Moore, and is directed by Dominic Cooke. Bruce Norris’s bitingly funny satire is about property and racial tensions in America. The first act is set in 1959, when a black family buys a house in a white Chicago suburb. Act two sees the actors take on different roles and the story reverse to the same house but in 2009. The modern-day neighbourhood is now predominantly black, and a white couple are trying to buy the same house.

LINKS

TICKETS: Book tickets to Clybourne Park at the Wyndham’s Theatre
NEWS: More News on Clybourne Park
AWARDS: Pulitzer Prize for Drama – past winners
AWARDS: The Pulitzer Prize website

The Acid Test By Anya Reiss at the Royal Court

Directed by Simon Godwin
13 May – 11 June 2010
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court Theatre
Press Night, Monday 23 May 7pm

The Acid Test by Anya Reiss is the next play to open in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs from 13 May (press night 23 May) with a cast including Phoebe Fox, Vanessa Kirby, Denis Lawson and Lydia Wilson.

The Acid Test is the second play from Anya Reiss, whose play Spur of the Moment premiered at the Royal Court in July 2010, winning her the award for Most Promising Playwright at both the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards. Anya attended the Young Writers Programme at the Royal Court and wrote her first play when she was 17.

‘This has been the worst day of my life. So can you please get drunk with me?’

Dana, Ruth and Jess down shots to console the heart-broken, to comfort the anxious and just pass the time. Kicked out from the family home Jess’s dad, Jim, invades the party with just as much recklessness as the girls. As the night passes and vodka bottles are emptied, Friday night in becomes high drama.

An unruly new comedy asking if age equals maturity.

Phoebe Fox plays Ruth. Her theatre credits include As You Like It at the Rose Theatre Kingston and A Month in the Country at Chichester Festival Theatre. Vanessa Kirby plays Dana. Her theatre credits include As You Like It at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Women Beware Women at the National Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ghosts and All My Sons at the Octagon Theatre.

Denis Lawson plays Jessica’s dad Jim. His most recent theatre credits include La Cage aux Folles, Oleanna at the Duke of York and Lust at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. On screen, he is widely known for playing Tom Campbell-Gore in BBC 1’s Holby City. His other credits include Bleak House, the Star Wars Trilogy, Local Hero and The Man in the Iron Mask. Lydia Wilson plays Jessica. She last appeared at the Royal Court as Phoebe in The Heretic. Her recent credits include Blasted at the Lyric Hammersmith, Pains of Youth at the National Theatre and House of Special Purpose at Chichester Festival Theatre. On television, she appeared in BBC 1’s Any Human Heart.

Simon Godwin directs. His credits at the Royal Court include Wanderlust by Nick Payne, Faith Healer and Far Away at Bristol Old Vic, The Winter’s Tale for Headlong and the Nuffield Theatre Southampton, Mister Heracles at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Simon directed seven main stage shows as Associate Director of the Royal and Derngate Theatres in Northampton under Artistic Director Rupert Goold. He also directed work as part of the Royal Court 2008 and 2010 International Residencies.

The Acid Test is designed by Paul Wills, with lighting by Malcolm Rippeth and sound by Nick Manning.

The Acid Test is part of the Royal Court’s Jerwood New Playwrights programme, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation

Release issued by: Royal Court

LINKS

Royal Court website

SPECIAL OFFER: Tickets to Clybourne Park at the Wyndham’s Theatre

Best Play winner Clybourne Park: Save £11 on tickets

Save £11 on tickets to CLYBOURNE PARK at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London

Valid Monday to Friday performances

Winner of just about every Best Play award going – including the Olivier Awards and Evening Standard Theatre Awards –  the Royal Court’s sell out, smash hit comedy is now on at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End – but only for a strictly limited season.

The critics hailed it as ‘Shockingly Entertaining’ and ‘Appallingly funny’ as this devastating satire explores the ever contentious themes of race and property ownership from two time periods – 1959 and 2009.

A terrific cast, including Sophie Thompson, Stephen Campbell Moore and Lorna Brown, star in Bruce Norris’s award-winning play directed by Dominic Cooke.

The Independent

The Telegraph

The Times

The Guardian

Save £11 on tickets to CLYBOURNE PARK at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London

Valid Monday to Friday performances

LINKS

Book tickets to Clybourne Park
Reviews on Clybourne Park
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Olivier Awards: National, Legally Blonde

In a star-studded awards ceremony last night, Sunday 13 March, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London, the Society of London Theatre held their 35th annual theatre awards ceremony.

Hosted by musicals star Michael Ball and actress Imelda Staunton, the awards celebrate the best of the year’s London theatre.

Big winners last night included the National Theatre, which swept up seven awards for two of its productions: Thea Sharrock’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s After the Dance, which won awards including best revival, best actress for Nancy Carroll and best actor in a supporting role for Adrian Scarborough; and its production of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard, including best director for Howard Davies and best set design for Bunny Christie.

In other subsidised venues the Royal Court picked up three awards, including best new play for Bruce Norris’s comedy Clybourne Park, which is now playing at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End, and two awards for the Donmar Warehouse, including David Thaxton picking up best actor in a musical for Passion.

Roger Allam won best actor for his performance as Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Globe’s production of Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, beating stiff competition from Rory Kinnear, Derek Jacobi, David Suchet and Mark Rylance.

The most successful musical of the night was Legally Blonde at the Savoy Theatre, which picked up three major awards: best new musical, best actress in a musical for Sheridan Smith and best performance in a supporting role in a Musical for Jill Halfpenny.

Other musicals rewarded at the event included We Will Rock You, which won the Olivier Audience Award voted for by members of the theatregoing public, and the Open Air Theatre’s summer production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

Stephen Sondheim was presented with an Olivier Special Award for his enormous contribution to theatre, with the award presented by Sir Cameron Mackintosh and legendary actress Angela Lansbury.

Big shows to miss out on awards this year included Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, which failed to pick up any awards despite seven nominations, and End of the Rainbow at the Trafalgar Studios, which was nominated for four awards including best actress for Tracie Bennett in her performance as Judy Garland.

Notable performances during the ceremony included a star turn by legendary American singer Barry Manilow, who also sang a duet with Wicked and Oliver! star Kerry Ellis; current and former stars of The Phantom of the Opera and Love Never Dies – Ramin Karimloo, John Owen-Jones and Sierra Boggess; Emma Williams and Michael Xavier singing Everything We Know from Love Story; Alfie Boe, who is soon to star in Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre, singing Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific; Susan McFadden and the current cast of Legally Blonde; and Adrian Lester paying tribute to Stephen Sondheim by singing Being Alive from Company, along with Angela Lansbury singing a moving rendition of Liaisons from A Little Night Music and 400 students from national drama schools singing Our Time from Merrily We Roll Along.

LISTEN & WATCH AGAIN

BBC iPlayer – Radio 2 coverage

BBC iPlayer – BBC News

LINKS

Olivier Awards – list of winners

Olivier Awards microsite

Olivier Awards – news

Olivier Awards – Binkie Blog’s Picks and Pans

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