Game Of Thrones’ Gethin Anthony will star alongside Jamie Ballard, Imogen Doel and Laura Rees in In The Vale Of Health, a series of Simon Gray plays to be performed in rep at the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs from 20 March.
Directed by Tamara Harvey, the quartet of plays – Japes, Japes Too, Michael and Missing Dates – are based on the same characters in the same situation but all tell a different story with entirely different outcomes.
Japes tells the story of Michael and Jason (Japes), whose parents died in an accident when they were teenagers. The family home they inherited remains unchanged, but their lives are altered forever when Michael and Japes both fall in love with the same girl. The remaining three plays see the characters make different choices leading to different conclusions.
Anthony, who played Renly Baratheon in the popular HBO series, returns to the Hampstead Theatre following his appearance in 2009’s What Fatima Did. On screen, the actor has also appeared in Call The Midwife and Holby City.
Jamie Ballard returns to the London stage following his recent performance in Jamie Lloyd’s Olivier Award nominated production of Macbeth at the Trafalgar Studios. A National Theatre regular, having appeared in productions including Scenes From An Execution and Antigone at the South Bank venue, Ballard has appeared elsewhere in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Written On The Heart and Troilus & Cressida at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Doel was most recently seen on the London stage in Gastronauts at the Royal Court, where she has also appeared in Narrative, Collaboration, Primetime and Get Santa, while Rees has appeared on stage in Titus Andronicus and The Comedy Of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Love Actually and Lewis on screen.
Performed across nine weeks, coming to the end of their run on 17 May, the plays will see the cast’s performances evolve organically in response to their deepening knowledge of the characters.