Cast
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS
Kate/Anna
Kristin was last on stage playing Emma in Ian Rickson’s critically acclaimed production of Betrayal at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Working with Rickson, she also starred as Arkadina in his celebrated production of The Seagull at the Royal Court Theatre, for which she won the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, reprising the role on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre the following year. Her other theatre credits include Jonathan Kent’s production of As You Desire Me and Michael Blakemore’s production of Three Sisters, both at the Playhouse Theatre in London. Her extensive film credits include Salmon Fishing in Yemen, Bel Ami, The Horse Whisperer, The English Patient, I Loved You So Long, Leaving, Tell No One and Four Weddings and a Funeral, for which she won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress. She is currently filming Only God Forgives opposite Ryan Gosling and Invisible Woman opposite Ralph Fiennes, due for release next year. For television, Kristin’s credits include Body and Soul.
RUFUS SEWELL
Deeley
Rufus Sewell’s performance as Jan in Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll garnered him the Evening Standard, London Critics’ Circle and Olivier Awards for Best Actor when it played in the West End, followed by Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations for Best Actor when the play transferred to Broadway. He also received an Olivier Award nomination for his role in another Tom Stoppard play, Arcadia (National Theatre), and other notable theatre credits include Making it Better (Hampstead Theatre / West End), Luther (National Theatre), Rat in the Skull (Royal Court), Macbeth (Queen’s Theatre) and Brian Friel’s Translations (on Broadway). Rufus’s film work includes Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Illusionist, The Holiday, The Legend of Zorro, A Knight’s Tale, Dark City and Carrington; and he has won acclaim for leading roles for television including Zen, Pillars of the Earth, Eleventh Hour, John Adams, The Taming of the Shrew, Charles II, Middlemarch and Cold Comfort Farm. Rufus has four films set for release: All Things to All Men, The Occult, I’ll Follow You Down, and the groundbreaking Hotel Noir; and he also stars in the upcoming BBC drama, Restless.
LIA WILLIAMS
Kate/Anna
Lia’s first performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre, then the Comedy Theatre, as Ruth in Pinter’s The Homecoming with Ian Holm. Other Pinter plays include; The Room, Celebration (Almeida / New York), The Lover/The Collection (Donmar Warehouse) and The Hothouse (National Theatre, directed by Ian Rickson). Harold Pinter directed Lia in Oleanna (Royal Court / West End) with David Suchet. Other theatre work includes Hannah Jarvis in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia on Broadway, David Hare’s Skylight with Michael Gambon on Broadway, the National Theatre and West End(Olivier & Tony Nominated for Best Actress), Alan Ayckbourn’s The Revengers’ Comedies (Critics Circle-winner and Olivier Nominated for Best Comedy performance), Absurd Person Singular (West End), As You Like It (RSC), Earthquakes in London (National Theatre), My Child (Royal Court), Eccentricities of a Nightingale (Gate Theatre, Dublin / Best Actress Award). TV includes; Coup, Doc Martin, May 33rd (BAFTA Nominated), The Russian Bride (FIPA Best Actress), Shot Through the Heart, Mr Wroe’s Virgins and Seaforth. Film includes; Michael Winner’s Dirty Weekend, The King is Alive and Firelight. Radio includes; TS Elliot’s Four Quartets and The Waste Land, Faith Healer and The Lady from The Sea. Film directorial credits include three short films; The Stronger (BAFTA nominated and winner Raindance), Feathers and Dog Alone. Theatre directorial credits include; The Match Box (Liverpool Playhouse / Tricycle, London). Lia is soon to direct a screenplay for the BBC and is developing a documentary about the First Nations Batchewana people in Ontario, Canada.
KAS DARLEY
Kate/Anna understudy
Kas trained at LAMDA. Credits include Blue (Soho Theatre), Day By Night: Rio Occupation (Battersea Arts Centre/Albany Theatre), Hothouse (Arcola), Headlines (Ampersand Media/Battersea Arts Centre), Measure for Measure (Bridewell Theatre), Animal Farm (Sincera, Brazil), Frankenstein (tour) and Pride and Prejudice (Working Title).
Kas is artistic associate of theatre company Teatro Vivo, with whom she has worked on a number of productions including The Odyssey, Adventures in Wonderland and Supermarket Shakespeare.
Alex Dower
Deeley understudy
Alex’s most recent work includes Jaws 1916 for the Discovery Channel, Anastasia at Pushkin House, Holby City, Cassius Matthias’ short films Holler and Trent2Rent, and Ryan West’s acclaimed mockumentaries Bloody Country and Mime Fights. Theatre credits include The Winter’s Tale (Royal National Theatre), Golden Boy (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre), Life’s A Monkey (Cochrane Theatre), The Barber of Seville (Royal Opera House), The Wind in the Willows (Bloomsbury Theatre & No.1 Tour), Great Expectations and Marriage (Shaw Theatre), Brighton Beach Memoirs (Edinburgh, Cyprus & Moscow Festivals), Oktoberfest and The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (Lyric Studio) and Geese Theatre Company tours of prisons. TV credits include Silent Witness, Eastenders, Casualty, The Bill, Is Harry on the Boat? and Night & Day; film work includes The Gathering with Christina Ricci, Social Unrest by Melanie Gilligan, and The Adventures of George the Projectionist. Alex has also recently performed acting workshops with prisoners in Perm, Russia, and Palestinian refugees in Beirut.
Creative
Harold Pinter
Playwright
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 until his death on Christmas Eve 2008. (They were married in 1980). He wrote twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Sleuth, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce’s Exiles, David Mamet’s Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000.
In 2005 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Other awards include the Companion of Honour for services to Literature, the Legion D’Honneur, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D’Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. He received honorary degrees from eighteen universities.
On 7 September 2011 it was announced that The Comedy Theatre will be renamed The Harold Pinter Theatre. This production of Old Times is the first Pinter to be performed since the theatre was renamed.
Ian Rickson
Director
Ian was Artistic Director at the Royal Court from 1998 to 2006, during which time he directed Krapp’s Last Tape, The Winterling, Alice Trilogy, The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, Fallout, The Night Heron, Boy Gets Girl, Mouth to Mouth (also in the West End), Dublin Carol, The Weir (also in the West End and on Broadway),The Lights, Pale Horse and Mojo (also at the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago), Ashes & Sand, Some Voices and Killers. His last production for the Royal Court, The Seagull, transferred to Broadway. Other theatre includes The River (Royal Court), Hamlet (Young Vic), Jerusalem (Royal Court, West End and Broadway), Betrayal (Comedy Theatre), The Children’s Hour (Comedy Theatre), The Hothouse and The Day I Stood Still (NT), Parlour Song (Almeida), Hedda Gabler (Roundabout Theatre, New York), The House of Yes (Gate) and Me & My Friend (Chichester Festival Theatre). Film includes: Fallout, Krapp’s Last Tape and The Clear Road Ahead.
Film includes: Primo (HBO/BBC) and Krapp’s Last Tape.
Hildegard Bechtler
Designer
Most recently: Farewell to the Theatre directed by Roger Michell (Hampstead Theatre), sets for Top Hat (West End & Tour) and The Damnation of Faust directed by Terry Gilliam (ENO & Teatro Massimo, Palermo).
Theatre includes: set and costumes for After the Dance (National Theatre, 2011 Olivier Award for Best Costumes), Cause Célèbre (Old Vic), Blithe Spirit (West End) and Arcadia (Broadway). Also, designs for The Misanthrope (West End), Hedda Gabler and The Seagull (Broadway, also Royal Court), Harper Regan, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, The Hothouse, Thérèse Raquin (set), Exiles, Primo (also Broadway), Iphigenia at Aulis (Evening Standard Best Designer nomination), The Merchant of Venice, Richard II and King Lear (National Theatre), The Master Builder (West End), All About My Mother and Richard II (Old Vic) and Now or Later, Krapp’s Last Tape, Blasted, Terrorism and My Name Is Rachel Corrie (Royal Court, also New York), Rosmersholm and The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (Almeida and West End), The Crucible (also West End, Olivier Award Best Production 2007) and Electra (RSC) and The Jewish Wife (Young Vic).
Opera includes: sets for Aida (Canadian Opera Company), The Letter (Santa Fe Opera), Acis and Galatea (designs), Dido and Aeneas (set design) and Paul Bunyan (Royal Opera House), War and Peace, Boris Godunov, Lohengrin and Peter Grimes (English National Opera), La Cenerentola (also Staatsoper Berlin) and Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne), Dido and Aeneas (La Scala, Milan), Werther, Madama Butterfly, Wozzeck, Don Carlos and Katya Kabanova (Opera North), Peter Grimes and Simon Boccanegra (Bavarian State Opera), La Wally (Bregenz and Amsterdam), Lady Macbeth of Mtensk (Sydney Opera House, 2009 Australian Green Room Award for Best Opera Design), Dialogues des Carmélites (Paris Opéra) and Der Ring des Nibelungen (Scottish Opera).
Film includes: designs for Primo (HBO/BBC) and Krapp’s Last Tape.
Peter Mumford
Lighting
Peter trained as a stage designer at the Central School of Art in London, studying under Ralph Koltai, in the late Sixties. In 1969, during his last year at art school, he became a founder member of the mixed media experimental theatre group Moving Being (director Geoff Moore), with whom he worked as designer and lighting and projection designer on all productions until 1978, moving to Cardiff with the company in 1972. After that he continued to work with Moving Being on a project basis but began a wider based freelance career. In the late Seventies he became a part time member of the faculty of the London Contemporary School of Dance at The Place, teaching a course relating choreography to visual art and design and also at that time began collaborating with a number of choreographers in their early work at The Place, such as Siobhan Davies, Richard Alston, Ian Spink and many others. When the company Second Stride was formed in the early Eighties Peter was a founding collaborator as lighting designer – another working relationship that would last for nearly another decade. In the Eighties, Peter designed the lighting for a huge number of dance works for companies such as London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Rambert, Second Stride, Siobhan Davies Co. and many other individual projects at that time. He also continued to design projects with Moving Being like the major site specific “Mabinogion” – first at Carnarvon Castle and later in Cardiff.
His work gradually expanded into opera, designing sets/costumes and lighting for
“Parsifal “for WNO in 1978 and then into drama more towards the end of the Eighties.
“The Overgrown Path” at The Royal Court in 1985 was the first straight play he lit in London.
In 1987 he co-founded Dancelines Productions, a film/TV production company committed to creating and producing dance for television. He produced and directed many programmes/films for Dancelines for both Channel Four and BBC2 up until the mid- Nineties and during that period the work won many awards including OperaScreen IMZ 1991- Best New Work / DanceScreen 1992 – Best Studio Adaptation/ Video Danse Grand Prix 1994 – best series (Dance House) and an Emmy Nomination for the TV adaptation of Mathew Bourne’s Swan Lake which Peter directed.
The last real work in this area was the series “48 Preludes and Fugues” (Bach) for BBC2 in 2002 – 48 short films, of which Peter directed 24 and was lighting director on the rest.
His work is now predominantly in the area of lighting design, but still designs sets on certain projects and most recently was Director of Photography for Francesca Zambello’s film of “The Little Prince”.
Recent theatre credits include: Faust & Damnation of Faust (English National Opera); Alice (Scottish Ballet); Love And Information (Royal Court Theatre); Scenes From An Execution (National Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndham’s Theatre, London); Jumpy (Duke Of York’s Theatre); Top Hat (Aldwych Theatre, London).
Stephen Warbeck
Music
Stephen has scored an array of stage productions, television projects and feature films. He is perhaps best-known for his Academy Award-winning work on Shakespeare in Love. Theatre includes: The Children’s Hour (also at the Comedy); Jerusalem (Royal Court, West End and Broadway); Season’s Greetings, Welcome to Thebes, The Power of Yes, Mrs Affleck and An Inspector Calls (National Theatre); Measure for Measure, Parlour Song, When the Rain Stops Falling and Cloud Nine (Almeida); Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Othello and Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Shakespeare’s Globe); Alice in Wonderland, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Tempest, The Cherry Orchard and The White Devil (RSC); The Seagull, The Winterling, Fallout, The Night Heron, Mojo and Pale Horse (Royal Court); Proof (Donmar Warehouse) and Swimming With Sharks (Vaudeville).
Films include: Shakespeare in Love (Academy Award), Billy Elliot (BAFTA nomination), Mrs Brown, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Charlotte Gray, On a Clear Day, Proof and Polisse (Official Selection, Cannes Film Festival 2011). Television includes: Prime Suspect seasons 1–5 (BAFTA nomination), Skellig and Just William.
Paul Groothuis
Sound
Born in Holland, Paul Groothuis trained as a stage manager at Central School of Speech and Drama.
Between 1984 and 2003, he was a member of the sound department at the NT where his designs included: Anything Goes, His Dark Materials, Edmond, Henry V, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Coast of Utopia, My Fair Lady, Hamlet (1987 and 2010), The Oedipus Plays, Summerfolk, The Merchant of Venice, The Rose Tattoo, Rafta Rafta, Candide, Oklahoma!, Oh What a Lovely War, A Little Night Music, Lady in the Dark, Guys and Dolls, Under Milk Wood, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, The Wind in the Willows, The Night of the Iguana and The Shaughraun. Also, The King and I (London Palladium and UK tour), Endgame (Albery), Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! (Sadler’s Wells, UK, USA, Japan and Korea tours), Dorian Gray, The Car Man, Edward Scissorhands, Highland Fling and Cinderella, Mermaids (Dublin), Carousel (NT, West End and Tokyo), Oliver! (London Palladium and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), Mary Poppins (UK tour and Holland), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Marguerite (West End and Tokyo), Stuff Happens, The House of Bernarda Alba, Buried Child, Henry IV Parts I & II and Acorn Antiques (West End), Hamlet (NT, 2011), All My Sons (NT and West End), The Cherry Orchard, The Children’s Hour, Flare Path, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Tempest and Sweeney Todd (Chichester and West End), Oliver! (UK tour) and Mary Poppins (USA tour), Kiss Me, Kate (Chichester / Old Vic), Sleeping Beauty (New Adventures) and Chariots of Fire (Gielgud)
Paul was awarded Live magazine’s Sound Designer of the Year Award for his work on Oklahoma! and Oh What a Lovely War.
Sam Jones CDG
Casting
Sam was previously Head of Casting for the RSC. She has just cast the opening year for the newly formed National Theatre Wales.
Her extensive theatre credits include work for Peter Hall, Steven Berkoff, Kneehigh, Shared Experience, Told By An Idiot, The Opera Group, Sheffield Crucible, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Hampstead Theatre, the Almeida and the Royal Court. Her West End work includes: Another Country, Journey’s End, Dinner, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Up for Grabs!, After Mrs Rochester and, most recently, The Children’s Hour. Her work for the Young Vic includes: Cruel and Tender, Sweet Nothings, Amazonia, Festa!,
Electra and, most recently, I Am the Wind. Her recent television work includes several series of Trial and Retribution, The Commander, Above Suspicion, the BAFTA Award-winning Occupation and Lennon Naked. Recent film work includes Resistance.
SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS
Producer
Sonia has initiated and produced more than 130 new productions over the past 15 years. Recent and future West End and Broadway productions include: the UK premiere of The Book of Mormon by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone (February 2013), Nice Work If You Can Get It by George & Ira Gershwin and Joe DiPietro, Twelfth Night and Richard III, A Chorus of Disapproval by Alan Ayckbourn, The Sunshine Boys by Neil Simon, Hay Fever by Noël Coward, Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn, Master Class by Terrence McNally, Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, Betrayal by Harold Pinter, Much Ado About Nothing, Legally Blonde The Musical by Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris, The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman, La Bête by David Hirson, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Private Lives by Noël Coward, A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau, in a version by John Mortimer, A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller, La Cage Aux Folles by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn, A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, Othello, Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti, translated by Beverley Cross and Francis Evans, No Man’s Land by Harold Pinter, The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, in a new version by Christopher Hampton, Maria Friedman: Re-arranged, Under The Blue Sky by David Eldridge, That Face by Polly Stenham, Dealer’s Choice by Patrick Marber, Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin adapted by David Greig and Rufus Norris, Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard, In Celebration by David Storey, The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter, Donkeys’ Years by Michael Frayn, Love Song by John Kolvenbach, Faith Healer by Brian Friel, The Woman in White by Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Zippel and Charlotte Jones, Celebration by Harold Pinter, Shoot the Crow by Owen McCafferty, Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray, As You Like It, The Home Place by Brian Friel, Whose Life is it Anyway? by Brian Clark, By the Bog of Cats by Marina Carr, Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’ by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, Endgame by Samuel Beckett, Jumpers by Tom Stoppard, See You Next Tuesday by Francis Veber, adapted by Ronald Harwood, Hitchcock Blonde by Terry Johnson, Absolutely! {perhaps} by Pirandello, in a new version by Martin Sherman, Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet, Ragtime by Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens and Terrence McNally, Macbeth, A Day In the Death of Joe Egg by Peter Nichols, Afterplayby Brian Friel, Up For Grabs by David Williamson, On An Average Day by John Kolvenbach, Noises Off by Michael Frayn, A Servant to Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni in a new adaptation by Lee Hall, Port Authority by Conor McPherson, Spoonface Steinberg by Lee Hall, Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet.
Sonia Friedman Productions is a subsidiary of the Ambassador Theatre Group. For the full list of SFP’s theatre credits please visit: www.soniafriedman.com