Full casting has been announced for Life Of Galileo at the Young Vic, directed by BAFTA Award-winner Joe Wright.
Brendan Cowell takes the title role and is joined by Billy Howle (Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Bristol Old Vic) as Andrea, Paul Hunter (Animal Farm, Young Vic) as Sagredo and Anjana Vasan (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Globe) as Virginia.
The full cast is: Ayesha Antoine, Jason Barnett, Brendan Cowell, Billy Howle, Paul Hunter, Joshua James, Bettrys Jones, Alex Murdoch, Brian Pettifer, Anjana Vasan and Sarah Wright.
Galileo Galilei: father, hero, heretic. When a chance discovery leads to evidence of a seismic shift in scientific thinking, Galileo sparks a dangerous dispute with authority. To challenge the idea that the earth is the centre of the universe is to challenge the all-powerful Roman Catholic Church.
Brecht’s dramatisation of the battle between belief and reason considers whether proof matters when it inspires dissent. Joe Wright catapults Life Of Galileo into the Young Vic’s Main House auditorium as you’ve never seen it before with design by Lizzie Clachan and projections by 59 Productions.
Bertolt Brecht was born in 1889 in Augsburg, Germany. He grew to maturity as a playwright in the twenties and early thirties and wrote such plays as Man Equals Man, The Threepenny Opera and The Mother. He left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933, eventually reaching the United States in 1941, where he remained until 1947. During this period of exile, he wrote Life Of Galileo, Mother Courage And Her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Shortly after his return to Europe in 1947, he founded the Berliner Ensemble and produced his own plays there until his death in 1956.
Joe Wright is an acclaimed film and theatre director. He returns to the Young Vic following his 2013 production of A Season in the Congo. His film credits include the six-time Oscar nominated Atonement which premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival; he was the youngest director ever to open this prestigious event. He received four Oscar nominations and won a BAFTA for Pride & Prejudice in 2005. His bold adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jude Law and Keira Knightley was one of the biggest film openings of autumn 2012. Joe is currently filming Darkest Hour, a drama about Winston Churchill’s turbulent first weeks as Prime Minister during WWII, starring Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn and Lily James.
For more information and to book your tickets, visit the venue’s website.