Audiences will be able to view the action from all sides when the Old Vic Theatre recreates its in-the-round CQS space for a 2014 season that begins with the UK premiere of Other Desert Cities in March.
By playing in-the-round at the historic Waterloo venue, the Tony Award nominated drama follows in the footsteps of The Norman Conquests, which became the first show to use the intimate configuration in 2008 and proved so successful that it transferred to New York.
A tale of family politics, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, which begins previews on 13 March before opening on 24 March, tracks what happens when Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs for the first time in six years. She brings with her the news that she is about to publish a memoir about her family that exposes a pivotal moment in their past. Unsurprisingly her news threatens to push the family to breaking point.
Other Desert Cities, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, will be directed at the Old Vic by Lindsay Posner, who returns to the Kevin Spacey-led venue following successful productions of The Winslow Boy, which transferred to New York, and Noises Off.
No casting news for the production has been announced.
Refitting the CQS space, made possible by support from global asset management company CQS, will begin following the conclusion of the Old Vic’s current production of Fortune’s Fool. The comedy, the West End premiere of a 19th century Russian satire, stars Game Of Throne’s Iain Glen, Merlin’s Alexander Vlahos and Olivier Award-winner Richard McCabe in a tale of newly-weds arriving at their country estate, a wealthy neighbour and enough bubbly to seriously loosen tongues.