Stuart McQuarrie and Jason Watkins have joined the cast of Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, which transfers to the West End early next year after a successful run at the Royal Court where it earned four Evening Standard Award nominations.
McQuarrie and Watkins join original Clybourne Park cast members Lorna Brown, Sarah Goldberg, Michael Goldsmith, Lucian Msamati, Sam Spruell and Sophie Thompson, replacing Martin Freeman and Stefan Rhodri who starred in the Royal Court run.
Clybourne Park will play a limited 14 week season at the Wyndham’s theatre, opening for previews on 28 January 2011. Directed by the Royal Court’s Artistic Director Dominic Cooke, Norris’s satire tells the story of two generation’s views regarding a neighbourhood, the first act set in 1959 and the second in 2009. Although society’s attitudes may have changed considerably on the surface over the past 50 years, Clybourne Park explores whether the same issues are still actually festering beneath the floorboards.
McQuarrie is a Royal Court regular having appeared in Wanderlust and Relocated at the Sloane Square venue. The actor’s other stage credits include Happy Now? at the National Theatre, The God Of Hell at the Donmar Warehouse and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) Taming Of The Shrew. Having worked extensively on film, McQuarrie can currently be seen in Burke & Hare and Mike Leigh’s Another Year. Previous screen credits include Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and appearances in television series Extras, Silent Witness and Peep Show.
Watkins is a Laurence Olivier Award-nominated actor whose résumé includes National Theatre productions Our Class, Landscape With Weapon, A Laughing Matter and She Stoops To Conquer, and appearances in The Late Henry Moss at the Almeida theatre, the Piccadilly theatre’s Kafka’s Dick and Filumena and the A Servant For Two at the New Ambassadors theatre. Currently filming the third series of BBC Three’s Being Human, Watkins’s other television credits include Lark Rise To Candleford, Psychoville and Little Dorrit. His film work includes Nativity, Wild Child, The Gold Compass and Confetti.
Marking the third recent West End transfer for the Royal Court, after the success of Jerusalem and Enron, Clybourne Park opens on 8 February and plays until 7 May 2011.
CM