Obi Abili, Kirsty Bushell, Samuel Edward-Cook, Finbar Lynch, Patrick O’Kane and Kathryn Pogson will join Juliette Binoche in the Ivo van Hove production of Antigone playing at the Barbican Theatre next spring.
The eagerly anticipated production, which runs at the Barbican in March as part of a tour taking in Europe and America, features a new translation of the Greek tragedy by TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Anne Carson.
The stunning roll call of theatrical talent reunites Abili and Edward-Cook, who appeared opposite each other earlier this year in Shakespeare’s Globe’s production of Titus Andronicus. Bushell and Lynch both boast a host of stage credits from companies as prestigious as the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, while O’Kane recently won the UK Theatre Award for Best Performance in a Play for Owen McCafferty’s Quietly. Pogson, who boasts stage credits on both side of the Atlantic, may be best known for appearances in films including Brazil and The Company Of Wolves.
In the production Binoche plays Antigone, a woman whose dead brother is deemed a traitor. When his body is left unburied beyond the city walls, Antigone refuses to accept the punishment, defying her uncle and those in charge to forge ahead with a funeral.
Antigone’s casting news follows fast on the heels of the announcement that van Hove’s acclaimed production of A View From The Bridge, which ran at the Young Vic earlier this year, will transfer to the West End in 2015 with a cast led by Mark Strong.