Six years after he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award, American actor Michael Brandon returns to the London stage tonight, in Wet Weather Cover at Islington’s King’s Head theatre.
Oliver Cotton’s debut play finds Brandon playing an American actor who is trapped with his British colleague in a leaking trailer while the movie he is filming is being delayed by torrential rain. Confined together, the trapped thespians battle it out in this comedy about status, ego and national identity.
Brandon, who may be best known as the male half of hit 80s cop show Dempsey And Makepeace, is no stranger to playing US celebrities. His 2004 Laurence Olivier Award nomination came for his portrayal of talk show host Jerry Springer in the hugely successful and equally controversial Jerry Springer The Opera. He has since been seen in London in the Steven Berkoff-directed On The Waterfront at the Hackney Empire in 2007.
Brandon is joined in the cast by comic actor Steve Furst, a regular performer in Little Britain who was most recently seen on the big screen in St Trinian’s II, and Pepe Balderrama.
Wet Weather Cover marks both the theatrical writing debut of Cotton and the directorial debut of Kate Fahy, both of whom are best known as actors. Cotton has worked extensively with the UK’s most acclaimed companies, including the National Theatre, where he has appeared in more than 30 productions, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court and Shakespeare’s Globe.
Fahy’s film credits include Defiance and The Living And The Dead. She last appeared on stage in the Almeida theatre production of The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, starring opposite her husband Jonathan Pryce. The theatrical couple have had a busy start to 2010, as Pryce has just opened to rapturous reviews in The Caretaker at the Trafalgar Studio 1.
MA