CityLife

Stars lined up for Exchange's season

ECLECTIC MIX AHEAD: Exchange

THE Royal Exchange have revealed their Autumn/Winter season and the Exchange’s artistic director Sarah Frankcom tells me that the season will open with a new version of Moliere’s The Miser.

Directed by guest director Helena Kaut-Howson, Sarah believes that “this dark farce feels very apt for now. Helena always does something very different and unique.”

She also revealed that Derek Griffiths has just been cast in this classic comedy of manners as curmudgeonly skinflint Harpagon.

He wants to arrange marriages for his children, Cléante and Élise, with unsuitable but rich partners, while he is determined to take the young and beautiful Marianne as a wife for himself.

His feisty offspring long to escape from his penny-pinching household and marry their respective lovers.

The conflict comes to a head when Harpagon’s dearest possession, his moneybox full of gold, gets stolen in an attempt to force him to abandon his plans. Which will prevail, his lust or his love of gold? The production runs from September 2 until October 3.

That’s followed by Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock, directed by Sarah.

A World Premiere co-production with the Lyric Hammersmith, for various technical reasons it will actually be staged at the Lyric first before coming to the Exchange from October 7-31.

Stockport-born Simon Stephens’ has and is renewing his relationship with the Exchange who have previously premiered his M.E.N. Theatre Award-winning plays Port and On The Shore Of The Wide World.

Sarah directs this story of a disparate group of A-level students set in the hot-house environment of a Stockport private sixth form college.

“This will be something of a departure for Simon, who I think everyone now acknowledges as one of the country’s most exciting young playwrights,” she enthuses.

“This is something of a departure for him in that it’s the first time he’ll be dealing exclusively with middle-class characters.

"Simon always has had this preoccupation with how young people are restricted and contained and here the characters al have this inner elequeence and articulacy but their emotional intelligence leaves something to be desired!

"We’ll be working with an entirely unknown cast of eight actors under 20 years of age, so that’s exciting to contemplate.”

Next in the line-up is John Osborne’s The Entertainer, directed by Royal Exchange Artistic Director Greg Hersov and running from November 4-December 5.

Written in 1957 by theatre’s original “angry young man”, The Entertainer followed the wild success of Osborne’s first play Look Back In Anger.

Alternating realistic scenes with Vaudeville performances, the play uses the central character of failed third-rate song and dance man Archie Rice to examine the state of the country and the decline of England after the war.

Written originally as a star vehicle for Laurence Olivier the play features a leading role that is considered one of the greatest and most challenging parts in late twentieth-century drama.

The Exchange’s production will star David Schofield. “We haven’t seen enough of him here,” says Sarah, “and I think he’s perfect casting in State Of the Nation play, full of potent metaphors for us today.”

Blithe Spirit, which will be the theatre’s Christmas production, directed by Sarah, is Noel Coward’s famously funny romp through the world of socialite and novelist Charles Condomine who is haunted by the ghost of his first wife Elvira.

She appears following a séance held by the engagingly eccentric clairvoyant Madame Arcati and causes havoc with her continuous attempts to disrupt Charles’ marriage to second wife Ruth.

It is, says Sarah, “truly classic Coward and a play I’ve wanted to do for a long tiime. I think Madame Arcati is one of the great characters and we’ll have a top name to play her, I promise! What I want to do is to spook the bejesus out of our audience!

"The idea of people that are dead materialising out of thin air in a play that’s being done in the round is a delicious challenge.

"I like to think it can be a great adult comedy and family show, as was See How They Runat the same time last year.”

The production runs from December 9-January 23, 2010.

A Raisin In The Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, is “another show we’ve wanted to do for bloomin’ years,” laughs Sarah, “and we’re so pleased that Michael Buffong is coming back to the theatre to direct it.

"It’s one of the great American plays and it still feels relevant with the questions it asks about whether these balck characters can manage to transcend class and race.”

The ground-breaking powerhouse drama tells the story of a struggling African-American family being raised in a crowded apartment on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s.

The play follows the Younger family as they struggle to find a better and more comfortable lifestyle. It also records their frustrations as they try to rise above their lower-class roots and to find success in a predominantly white America despite the racial and social prejudice that continues to weigh them down.

It runs from January 27-February 20.