HighTide Festival 2010

published August 11 2010

HighTide are delighted to announce that award-winning actor and director Samuel West will be performing at the HighTide Arts Club. The Arts Club is an exclusive evening of short creative responses to oppression by emerging international artists and headlined by Samuel West.
Samuel West’s most recent stage appearance was as Jeffrey Skilling in Lucy Prebble’s Enron. Extensive stage credits include Betrayal and The Family Reunion for the Donmar Warehouse, A Number and Much Ado About Nothing for Sheffield Theatres, Doctor Faustus and The Master and Margarita for Chichester Festival Theatre, the title roles in Hamlet and Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company (both directed by Steven Pimlott) and The Sea and Arcadia for the National Theatre. His film credits include Howards End, Notting Hill, Van Helsing, Persuasion and Iris and on television he has been seen in Foyles War, Cambridge Spies and as Ted Heath in Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, . Forthcoming television includes Murder on the Orient Express and Any Human Heart. His directing work includes Waste for the Almeida and The Romans In Britain, Insignificance and As You Like It for Sheffield Theatres, where he was Artistic Director. He also directed Cosi Fan Tutte for English National Opera.
Samuel West will read from Generation Jeans by Nikolai Khlezin of the Belarus Free Theatre.

Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in White Russia (Belarus) Western gramophone records and jeans are still highly-desired ‘pieces of the free world’.

In 1994 Alexander Lukashenko took office as president of Belarus. In the protest against this ‘last dictator in Europe’ a special part was played by jeans: a denim shirt was raised as a protest flag during a demonstration on 16th September 2005. This signalled the start of the ‘Jeans Revolution’.

At the end of March 2005, Natalia Koliada and Nikolai Khalezin founded the Belarus Free Theatre. However, they have often clashed with the authorities and have been repeatedly jailed. In the meantime the company is enjoying increasing renown in the West and can count the late Harold Pinter and Vaclav Havel and Mick Jagger among their fans.

In Generation Jeans, Nikolai Khalezin tells his semi-autobiographical story of the Jeans Revolution in Minsk. He approaches it seriously, but with some self-mockery. Theatre of great urgency, directness and wit.

Samuel West Stars in Goold's Chichester ENRON

Samuel West Stars in Goold's Chichester ENRON

Date: 3 April 2009

Samuel West (pictured) will star as Jeffrey Skilling in the forthcoming premiere of Lucy Prebble's ENRON at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester (11 July - 29 August), directed by Rupert Goold (See News, 19 Feb 2009).
A co-production with Headlong and the Royal Court, where it transfers following its run in Chichester, ENRON explores one of the most infamous scandals in financial history, the collapse of the Enron energy company.

Samuel West has a long association with Chichester, with previous acting credits there including Doctor Faustus, Cain and The Master and Margarita. He also directed The Lady's Not for Burning in 2002, which marked his directorial debut.

Since then he has become well established as a director, helming productions including Dealer's Choice in the West End and Waste at the Almeida. His most recent stage appearance was last year in The Family Renuion at the Donmar, while other acting credits include Betrayal (Donmar), Hamlet and Richard II (both RSC).

Further casting is still to be announced. Currently at the Minerva, Simon Gray's The Last Cigarette, starring Felicity Kendal, Nicholas Le Prevost and Jasper Britton, continues to 11 April, before transferring to Trafalgar Studios (See News, 27 Mar 2009).

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In other Chichester casting news, Adrian Rawlins and Clare Holman have been confirmed to play Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra in Heidi Thomas' new play The House of Special Purpose, which runs from 20 June tp 22 August 2009 in the Minerva Studio. It looks at the doomed Romanov family's final days imprisoned in a merchant's house prior to their execution in 1918. The production is directed by Howard Davies, whose recent credits include Burnt by the Sun, Gethsemane, and Her Naked Skin.
- by Theo Bosanquet

Wilton and West to Star in Donmar's Family Reunion

Wilton and West to Star in Donmar's Family Reunion

By Mark Shenton
18 Jul 2008

Penelope Wilton and Samuel West will star in The Family Reunion, the centerpiece production of a landmark T. S. Eliot festival being staged at the Donmar Warehouse this autumn that will offer audiences the opportunity to engage with one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.

The Family Reunion, as previously reported, will open on Nov. 25 (following previews from Nov. 20), for a run to Jan. 10, 2009, under the direction of Jeremy Herrin.
Both Wilton and West have previously worked extensively at the Donmar: Wilton is in the current hit production of The Chalk Garden (running to Aug. 2), and has previously appeared there in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, Lilian Hellman's The Little Foxes and Pinter's A Kind of Alaska, while West was seen Pinter's Betrayal there in 2007.
In Family Reunion West will play Harry, who returns to the ancestral home to celebrate his mother's birthday. Tormented by a dark secret, he confides in Aunt Agatha (Wilton), only to discover that the family too have its own hidden demons. The Family Reunion is described in press materials as a "poetic and powerful tale of sin and redemption" that "reveals a family haunted by the ghosts of their past."
Wilton's other recent theatre credits include Women Beware Women (RSC), The House of Bernarda Alba (National Theatre) and Afterplay (The Gate, Dublin; Charleston, USA and West End). For television, her work includes "Half Broken Things," "Dr Who," "Bob and Rose," "Victoria and Albert" and "Wives and Daughters"; and for film, "The History Boys," "Match Point," "Pride and Prejudice," "Calendar Girls" and "Iris."

West's other theatre credits include Caryl Churchill's A Number and Much Ado About Nothing(Sheffield Theatres), The Exonerated (Riverside Studios), Doctor Faustus (Minerva Theatre), and Hamlet and Richard II (RSC). His television work includes "The Long Walk to Finchley," "Cambridge Spies," "Longitude," "Edward VII" and "Persuasion"; and for film, "Van Helsing," "Iris," "Pandemonium," "Complicity," "Notting Hill," "Frankie and Johnny," "Howard's End" and "Carrington." He was the artistic director of Sheffield Theatres from 2004 to 2007. His other directing work includes the critically acclaimed revival of Dealer's Choice (Menier Chocolate Factory and Trafalgar Studios) and the forthcoming Waste at the Almeida Theatre.
The T. S. Eliot Festival will also include Katie Mitchell directing Stephen Dillane reading Four Quartets; rehearsed readings of Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party directed, respectively, by the Donmar's two associate directors, Douglas Hodge and Jamie Lloyd; and two evenings of readings of Eliot's verse produced and directed by Josephine Hart.
For tickets contact the box office at 0870 060 6624 or visit www.donmarwarehouse.com.

Warehouse welcomes West and Wilton

Warehouse welcomes West and Wilton

Reporter: Caroline Bishop, first published Fri 18 Jul 2008 11:46

Samuel West and Penelope Wilton return to the Donmar Warehouse to star in T S Eliot’s The Family Reunion, which opens on 25 November, after previews from 20 November.

The play tells of a family haunted by the ghosts of their past. Harry returns to the ancestral home after an eight year absence to celebrate his mother’s birthday. Tormented by a dark secret, he confides in Aunt Agatha only to discover that other family members also have their own hidden demons.

West (Harry) was last seen at the Donmar Warehouse in Pinter’s Betrayal in May 2007. As an actor he has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Sheffield Theatres, where he was also Artistic Director, and has been seen in television dramas including The Long Walk To Finchley, Cambridge Spies and Persuasion. His films include Howard’s End, Notting Hill and Iris, alongside Wilton. He is also a director, and his production of Dealer’s Choice at the Menier Chocolate Factory recently had a successful transfer to Trafalgar Studios.

Wilton (Agatha) is a regular at the Donmar Warehouse, where she is currently starring in Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, which ends on 2 August. Her other work at the Donmar includes John Gabriel Borkman, The Little Foxes and A Kind Of Alaska, and she has also been seen at the National Theatre in The House Of Bernarda Alba and in Women Beware Women for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her screen work includes Dr Who (as Harriet Jones), Bob And Rose, Victoria And Albert, plus the films The History Boys, Shaun Of The Dead, Pride And Prejudice and Calendar Girls.

The pair is directed by Jeremy Herrin, whose recent directorial credits include The Vertical Hour at the Royal Court, Statement Of Regret at the National and That Face at the Royal Court and Duke of York’s.

The Family Reunion, which plays until 10 January 2009, is the centrepiece of a T S Eliot festival at the Donmar, which includes rehearsed readings of Four Quartets (14-17 January), Murder In The Cathedral (2 December) and The Cocktail Party (17 December), plus two evenings of readings of Eliot’s verse (1 December and 5 January).

CB