Following the success of his OffWestEnd nominated play, Kunstler, Joseph Jefferson Award winning playwright Jeffrey Sweet’s The Value of Names will have its UK premiere this February 2025.
The Value of Names will star American actor Katherine Lyle (Troilus and Cressida, LAMDA; A Christmas Carol, Perseverance Theatre) as up-and-coming actor Norma who is staying with her retired comedy actor father Benny, played by Jeremy Kareken (The Shylock and the Shakespeareans, The New Ohio Theatre; American Rot, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club) in his Malibu mansion in 1983 Hollywood. With sharp dialogue and deeply conflicted characters, this show offers an exciting exploration of betrayal, redemption and the weight of the past on the future.
In this gripping and witty drama, Tim Hardy (The Trials of Galileo, Edinburgh Fringe, US & UK Tour, Mary Barnes, The Royal Court) will play the role of Leo, as he is forced to face the haunting consequences of his past actions, leading to a fierce, funny, and emotional battle between personal history and future aspirations.
Norma is caught in a powerful dilemma when she lands a career-defining role in a production directed by Leo, the man who betrayed her blacklisted actor father years ago by testifying against him to the House of Un-American Activities Committee. As Norma grapples with her ambition and loyalty to her father, her father must confront the painful possibility of his daughter working with the man who destroyed his career.
Writer Jeffrey Sweet comments, The script started with my becoming aware of the fact that the father of an actor I knew was blacklisted. She told me she had just been cast in a play, and I asked her what she would do if the director in the play had been someone who had given her father’s name to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). She told me that the director of her show was in a sandbox during HUAC so it wasn’t likely to happen. But that got me started thinking ‘what if’. The character of Leo is inspired by Elia Kazan and Jerome Robbins, who both famously named names to the Committee and spent the rest of their lives living with the anger of much of the community among whom they continued to work.
The Value of Names is at The White Bear Theatre Tuesday 11th February – Saturday 1st March 2025
