Headlong Artistic Director Rupert Goold, who today picked up another award for his direction of the Chichester Festival Theatre (CFT) production of Macbeth, has revealed forthcoming plans for the touring company’s new season, which includes another CFT collaboration, a Chekhov adaptation at London’s Gate and Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear.
Following Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot, which Goold directs at the Almeida in March to conclude the current season, Headlong returns to London in June with a Chekhov adaptation entitled …Sisters, which plays at the Gate from 5 June to 5 July. This theatrical experiment is adapted and directed by Chris Goode, winner of the Gate/Headlong New Directions Award 2008, which aims to find a new approach to classic international plays. In …Sisters, the events and concerns of Chekhov’s original play are rewired into constantly shifting relationships, producing a completely different performance every time.
Before that, away from the capital, Headlong’s plans begin in Guildford, where Sean Holmes (Moonlight And Magnolias) directs Richard Bean’s The English Game at the Yvonne Arnaud from 7-17 May, preceding a UK tour. Bean (In The Club, Harvest) explores the British psyche in this new play about cricket, radical politics and the tensions which underpin modern society.
In June, Goold heads to Chichester Festival Theatre to direct Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search Of An Author, in a new version by Goold and Ben Power (28 June-30 August). As with Headlong’s version of Marlowe’s Faustus in 2006, this is a bold re-imagining of a classic play. Updated and recontextualised, it is a dark parable for a media obsessed age and an exploration of how we define ourselves and what we call reality in the 21st century.
This is Goold’s second collaboration with CFT following last year’s much-lauded production of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart, which transferred to London’s Gielgud theatre and has dominated the awards season so far, including today’s Critics’ Circle Awards.
Goold will be hoping to continue his Shakespearean success as he directs Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear at the Liverpool Everyman from 30 October-29 November. Postlethwaite is best known for his many screen credits which include Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects, The Constant Gardener, In The Name Of The Father and TV series Sharpe. His recent stage credits include Scaramouche Jones at Riverside Studios in 2002, also directed by Goold.
Headlong’s plans continue into 2009 with a new work by Anthony Neilson (The Wonderful World Of Dissocia, God In Ruins) entitled Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, and a new play by George Devine Award-winning playwright Lucy Prebble, E.N.R.O.N, based on the infamous financial scandal. Dates and venues are to be confirmed.
CB