Casting update for Days of Significance
22 January 2008
Produced to great acclaim during the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival in the Swan Theatre and written in response to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Roy Williams’ new play, Days of Significance opens at the Tricycle Theatre in March 2008.
Originally produced as a promenade production with blistering topicality the play has been re-imagined for the Tricycle stage. Roy has also significantly re-worked the text to dramatise and acknowledge the shifting mood of a country now looking at troop withdrawal from Iraq.
RSC Literary Manager Jeanie O’Hare says of the changes to the play “One of the great benefits of having the time between producing a new play in Stratford and taking it to London is that we can continue to work on the text if events over-take the storytelling. Roy’s play is so topical, and so on the pulse of what is happening with young people who are on the cusp of making some hideously limited life choices, that Roy was keen to re-work the subtle moods and atmospheres of disillusion and desperation which characterise the situations these young people often find themselves steered into. Their dwindling hope, self-destructive anger and lust for life has been honoured and contextualised by Roy’s brave writing.”
Two young soldiers join their friends to binge drink the night before they leave for active service. Their complex love lives and mortal fears directly impact on their tour of duty. Roy Williams looks at the effects of war on these young men, how it forces them to grow up and take stock of themselves and the world they are living in.
Roy is one of the UK’s most exciting playwrights, whose recent work includes Joe Guy at the Soho Theatre, Fallout at the Royal Court and Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads at the National Theatre. He was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2001 for his play Clubland. Commenting on what inspired him to write the play, he says:
“Like others, I am against the war [in Iraq], but I had no interest in writing about the people in power. I remember watching a news item on telly about young people binge drinking at the weekends in city centres across the country. I wanted to capture that image and put it on the stage…I chose Much Ado About Nothing [for inspiration] because the structure of the piece fitted very nicely with what I wanted to write about, young men returning from war, first love, old love.”
Maria Aberg, is one of the most exciting young directors working in theatre. She directed the original production of Days of Significance in the Swan Theatre in Stratford. She worked closely with Dominic Cooke as Associate Director on the Late Plays: Winter’s Tale and Pericles for the RSC’s Complete Works Festival. She also masterfully directed Stallerhof at Southwark Playhouse in 2006 for which she received five star reviews. Her production of Gustav III by August Strindberg has just opened for the National Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden.
The creative team are: Lizzie Clachan (Set/Costume Design), David Holmes (Lighting), Carolyn Downing (Sound), Malcolm Ranson (Fights) and Laila Diallo (Movement).
The cast includes:
Ricky Champ (Vince/Darren),James Clyde (Lenny),Danny Dalton (Tony/Sean), Jamie Davis (Ben), Craig Gallivan (Jamie),Simon Harrison (Steve),Luke Norris (Dan), Mark Theodore (Brookes/Bouncer), Venetia Campbell (Donna),Claire-Louise Cordwell (Hannah), Pippa Nixon (Trish), Beverly Rudd (Clare), Lorraine Stanley (Gail).
Further information
Tricycle Theatre
12 – 29 March 2008
Press Night: Tuesday 18 March, 7pm
Box Office 020 7328 1000 www.tricycle.co.uk
For more information and interviews contact:
Nada Zakula
01789 412622
nada.zakula@rsc.org.uk
or
Philippa Harland
0207 845 0512
philippa.harland@rsc.org.uk
For press tickets please contact Victoria Wilson on 020 7845 0513 or victoria.wilson@rsc.org.uk
Images from the original 2006 production can currently be downloaded from www.epo-online.com. New production images will be available nearer the opening.
Notes to Editors
This production contains strong language, violence and explicit scenes of an adult nature.
The RSC Literary Department is generously supported by The Drue Heinz Trust.
The RSC’s New Work is generously supported by Christopher Seton Abele on behalf of the Argosy Foundation.
