Following a successful season of online productions, Original Theatre Company has announced its first live stage production since March 2020. The UK Tour of Ben Brown’s new political drama, A Splinter of Ice, will open on 8 June in Malvern and will tour until 31 July.
The production, starring Oliver Ford Davies as Graham Greene and Stephen Boxer as Kim Philby and directed by Alan Strachan with Alastair Whatley, has also been filmed on stage at the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre and will be released online via originaltheatreonline.com from 15 April until 31 July 2021.
Whilst Sara Crowe will play Rufa Philby in the online version, she is unavailable for the tour, so the casting for Rufa on tour is to be confirmed.
Moscow 1987 and the cold war begins to thaw. After declining his offer for more than 30 years, novelist Graham Greene travels into the heart of the Soviet Union to meet with his old MI6 boss, Kim Philby. Under the watchful eye of Russian memoirist and Philby’s last wife, Rufa, the two men set about catching up on old times. With a new world order breaking out around them, how much did the writer of The Third Man know about Philby’s secret life as a spy and did Philby betray his friend as well as his country?
From the writer of the award-winning West End play Three Days in May, which inspired the Oscar-winning film Darkest Hour, Ben Brown’s new political drama explores an unlikely friendship; a friendship interwoven with deceit and loyalty. Ben said of this production of A Splinter of Ice, “I’m thrilled to be working again with Alan Strachan and Oliver Ford Davies and to be joining forces with Stephen Boxer, Sara Crowe and Alastair Whatley for the premiere, at last, of my new play, online prior to a national tour.”
A Splinter of Ice is directed by Alan Strachan with Alastair Whatley and designed by Michael Pavelka, with original music composed and sound designed by Max Pappenheim, lighting designed by Jason Taylor and casting by Ellie Collyer-Bristow CDG.
