Jonathan Church Announces Festival 09 at Chichester Festival Theatre
Four world premieres, six plays and one classic musical make up Chichester Festival Theatre’s Festival 09 announced this week. The extended season from Artistic Director Jonathan Church and Executive Director Alan Finch begins a month earlier than last year and includes Chichester debuts from Howard Davies, Richard Eyre and Trevor Nunn.
From 11 March – 11 April, The Last Cigarette receives a world premiere in the Minerva Theatre
Simon Gray’s dramatisation of The Smoking Diaries will open Festival 09 in the Minerva Theatre with Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton. Completed by Gray just before his death in August 2008, The Last Cigarette draws on Gray’s many volumes of memoirs, including The Smoking Diaries and Coda. Former Artistic Director of the National Theatre Richard Eyre will direct.
Noël Coward’s Hay Fever runs from 9 April – 2 May in the main theatre.
Diana Rigg returns to Chichester Festival Theatre as Judith Bliss and Simon Williams will play husband David Bliss. The cast also includes Guy Henry as Richard Greatham. It is directed by Nikolai Foster, whose recent productions include the national tours of The Witches of Eastwick, Aspects of Love and A Song at Twilight , as well as Amadeus and Assassins at Sheffield Theatres and A Streetcar Named Desire at Clwyd Theatr Cymru.
Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides and Collaboration make a return to the Minerva Theatre from 28 April - 16 May after playing to full houses and critical acclaim in Festival 08. The two plays appear prior to a West End run at the Duchess Theatre from 20 May. Written as companion pieces, separate plays designed to complement each other, Collaboration and Taking Sides both explore the fine line between collaboration and betrayal during the Second World War.
The same cast will appear again, headed up by Michael Pennington as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Richard Strauss and David Horovitch as Stefan Zweig and Major Arnold. The two plays are directed by Philip Franks, designed by Arundel-based designer Simon Higlett.
Trevor Nunn directs Edmond Rostand’s classic play Cyrano De Bergerac for the first time. Joseph Fiennes plays Cyrano de Bergerac from 8th-30th May. One of the most iconic characters in drama, Cyrano is a soldier, poet, philosopher and duellist, equally at home with the sonnet as with the sword. But of one thing, he is incapable - he cannot tell the exquisite Roxanne that he loves her, and for only one reason. His nose. His huge, his ridiculous, his grotesque nose.
Joseph Fiennes’ credits include Epitaph For George Dillon in the West End and Loves Labours Lost, directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre. His films include Goodbye Bafana and Running with Scissors as well as The Merchant of Venice, Enemy at the Gates and the multi award-winning Shakespeare in Love.
Trevor Nunn has been Artistic Director of both the Royal Shakespeare Company (1968-1986) and of the National Theatre (1997-2003). His West End credits include the musicals Cats, Les Misérables, Starlight Express and Sunset Boulevard and most recently, A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
Wallenstein by Friedrich Schiller is adapted by Mike Poulton in another world premiere, running from 22nd May – 13th June in the Minerva Theatre.
Iain Glen plays Albrecht von Wallenstein in the world premiere of Mike Poulton’s new adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein. On the 250th anniversary of Schiller’s birth, the new adaptation dramatises the Wallenstein trilogy for the first time, incorporating all three plays, Wallenstein’s Camp, The Piccolomini and Wallenstein's Death.
A victim of his own military success, Wallenstein believes he is the only commander who can bring peace to the Empire. On the battlefield, Wallenstein inspires fanatical loyalty in his troops. At court, politicians, jealous of his victories, howl for his dismissal and plot against his life. Four wintry days of terrible events, conspiracy, divided loyalty and betrayal culminate in one night of violent score setting.
In a change of pace, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! is in the Festival Theatre from 5th June – 29th August.
Continuing the festival tradition of a large scale summer musical this joyous musical tells the captivating story of Oklahoman farm girl Laurey, forced to choose between Curly, the happy-go-lucky cowboy she loves and Judd, the mysterious loner she fears.
Heidi Thomas’ new play, The House of Special Purpose follows the plight of the Romanov family during the Russian Revolution. Transported to Ekaterinberg, the deposed Tsar of Russia is imprisoned with his wife, four daughters and invalid teenage son as the communist revolution sweeps through Russia. The play runs from 20th June - 22nd August.
For one brief and airless summer, the House of Special Purpose holds them all within its walls. Packed into the suffocating rooms, the family and their guards are forced into a frail and dangerous intimacy, tensions rising as boundaries strain and break.
Heidi Thomas’ recent work includes the original BBC television series Lilies and screen adaptations of Madame Bovary, Ballet Shows and I Capture the Castle. Her screenplays for the multi award-winning Cranford earned her a BAFTA and Emmy nominations for Outstanding Writing, along with Best Writer Awards from the Royal Television Society, The Broadcasting Press Guild and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.
Artistic Director Jonathan Church directs Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s epic novel The Grapes of Wrath from 10th July - 28th August. Premiered by Chicago’s renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1988, it won two Tony Awards on its transfer to Broadway. A large ensemble cast tell the story of the Joads – a family of impoverished Oklahoman share-croppers who, like thousands of others, lose everything and trek 2000 miles across America seeking a better life.
Another world premier will run from 11th July - 29th August. Rupert Goold returns to the Minerva Theatre to direct Lucy Prebble’s new play Enron in a co-production with Headlong and the Royal Court Theatre.
Based on real life and using music, movement and video, Enron explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, reviewing the tumultuous 1990s and casting a new light on the financial turmoil in which the world finds itself in 2009. The production will be designed by Anthony Ward with music and sound by Adam Cork.
From 10 September - 3 October, Stephanie Cole appears as Mrs Railton-Bell in Separate Tables, Terence Rattigan’s exploration of human emotion, set in the apparently genteel dining room of the Beauregard Private Hotel, near Bournemouth. Made up of two one-act plays Table by the Window and Table Number Seven, the plays are linked together, revealing an undercurrent of guilt, hatred and repressed passions.
When the plays were first staged in the West End in 1954, Rattigan changed the nature of Major Pollock’s crime in Table Number Seven to adhere to national censorship laws. When the plays then transferred to Broadway, with no such curtailments in place, Rattigan amended the play, with new passages suggesting that the Major’s offence was a homosexual one. However, Broadway producers did not approve of the changes and the version was never performed in Rattigan’s lifetime. This production will use the modified version that was re-discovered in the 1990s
Priority Booking for Friends of Chichester Festival Theatre opens on Thursday 19 February.
Public booking opens for all online only on Thursday 5 March with counter and telephone bookings from Monday 9 March.
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