Rising star Romola Garai is to play Masha in Sean Holmes and Filter’s new production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith from 15 January.
The production, which has a press night on 25 January and plays until 20 February, is a stripped down version of the classic which promises Filter’s trademark imaginative staging, use of sound and physicality to tell the story of the Prozorov family’s search for elusive happiness.
Garai’s previous London stage credits include Chekhov’s The Seagull and Shakespeare’s King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2007 and Calico at the Duke of York’s theatre in 2004. However it is on screen where Garai has begun to make her name, appearing in films As You Like It, Atonement and the just-released Glorious 39 and recently playing the lead role in the BBC adaptation of Emma.
The cast also includes Paul Brennen, Jonathan Broadbent, Poppy Miller, Gemma Saunders and Ferdy Roberts, all of whom appeared in Filter’s production of Twelfth Night which played as part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival, as well as Jim Bywater, Nigel Cooke, Clare Dunne, David Judge, John Lightbody, Mark Theodore, Sandra Voe and Paul Woodson.
Three Sisters forms part of Holmes’s first season as Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith, which has already included a revival of Trevor Griffiths’s Comedians and panto Jack And The Beanstalk. Holmes had previously collaborated with Filter on Twelfth Night and Caucasian Chalk Circle at the National Theatre.
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