Olivier Award winner Noma Dumezweni and Matthew Marsh will reprise their roles in A Human Being Died That Night when it returns to the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs later this year.
Nicholas Wright’s provocative drama about one of the apartheid regime’s most notorious assassins, Eugene de Kock, will return to London following its current run at Cape Town’s Fugard Theatre from 21 May to 21 June. It was first staged at the Hampstead Downstairs in May 2013.
A Human Being Died That Night is based on the best-selling 2003 book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and explores her extraordinary interviews with the South African police colonel that took place in 1997 when the psychologist was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Serving 212 years for crimes against humanity, murder, conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, assault, illegal possession of firearms and fraud, Wright’s play looks at how Gobodo-Madikizela dealt with the one of the most reviled figures in apartheid history and explored the question of how a fundamentally moral man could ever have become a mass murderer.
Under the direction of Jonathan Munby, Dumezweni and Marsh will reprise their roles as Gobodo-Madikizela and de Kock.
Both actors are regular faces on the London stage with Dumezweni following her recent role in Michael Grandage’s hit Henry V to appear in the production. The actress’s many other credits include Feast and Belong at the Royal Court, as well as numerous credits with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Marsh’s appearances include The Last Of The Haussmans, Blood And Gifts and The Overwhelming at the National Theatre, and West End productions Copenhagen and Glengarry Glen Ross.
The hard-hitting production will follow Tamara Harvey’s forthcoming quartet of little-performed inter-connected plays by Simon Gray, which run from 20 March and follow current drama The Mystae.