The all-female cast for Headlong and the Bush Theatre’s European premiere of Melissa Bubnic’s Boys Will Be Boys this June has been announced.
The co-production between the two revered new writing theatre companies will star stage regular Kirsty Bushell, who follows recent roles in Ivo Van Hove’s Antigone and the Bush Theatre’s Disgraced to lead the company as ruthless financial broker Astrid.
Gender politics and high finance collide in Bubnic’s timely musical drama set in the City, a place some still class as a man’s world. But in Boys Will Be Boys, all the players are women and Astrid has the top table reserved with a martini waiting.
Tackling the iniquity of the world of power brokering against a soundtrack of cabaret numbers, Bubnic’s subversive and witty drama evokes a world where women must take on roles to negotiate a world run by men and success depends on how far you are willing to play the game.
Bushell will be joined in the production by a company including Emily Barber, who made her critically acclaimed West End debut last year in the David Suchet-led The Importance Of Being Earnest, Chipo Chung (Phedre at the National Theatre, Turandot at Hampstead) and Helen Schlesinger, whose many London theatre credits include Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse and Fireface at the Young Vic.
The cast is completed by Indian Summers’ Ellora Torchia, who makes her first major London stage performance in the production.
Taking inspiration from its unique cabaret staging, Boys Will Be Boys will play in Shepherd Bush’s iconic live music venue Bush Hall from 25 June to 30 July as part of the Bush Theatre’s Bush Breaks Out season, which sees the venue’s work staged in new and unexpected spaces local to the theatre.