Emmy and Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives, Transamerica) makes her UK stage debut as the radical matriarch Paige in Hir, a disarmingly funny and strikingly original comedy.
Named ‘one of the most exciting theatre artists of our time’ by Time Out New York, Pulitzer and Tony-nominee Taylor Mac explodes the dysfunctional family drama and reinvents it for our times. Playing at Park Theatre from the 15 February to the 16 March 2024.
Felicity says of playing Paige: “I’m honored to get to work with Steve Kunis and to perform at the Park Theatre. As an ardent fan of Taylor Mac I’m so thrilled I get to act in one of Taylor’s brilliant plays. I studied in London back in the palaeolithic era and it has been a dream of mine to come back here and work someday. I’m a lucky gal.”
In a revival by critically acclaimed director Steven Kunis, Hir grapples with a family in flux, as they attempt to build a brave new world out of pieces of the old.
Isaac, the prodigal son (Steffan Cennydd) has returned home from the brutality of war, only to discover his family home transformed by domestic revolution. The patriarchy has fallen, and his mother Paige (Felicity Huffman) has been liberated from an oppressive marriage to Arnold (Simon Startin). Enlisting Isaac’s newly out transgender sibling Max (Thalía Dudek) as her ally, Paige is on a crusade to tear apart the old regimes – but in Taylor Mac’s funny and strikingly original comedy, annihilating the past doesn’t always free you from it.
Set and Costume Design is by Ceci Calf whose credits include Not Now & Yes So I Said Yes (Finborough), The Mozart Question (Barn Theatre, Cirencester), Farm Hall (Jermyn Street/Theatre Royal Bath/UK Tour); The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, A Skull In Connemara (Dailes Teātris Riga, Latvia); Othello (Watermill Theatre); Love & Information (Clapham Omnibus); Breeding (Kings Head); Under The Black Rock (Arcola); Orlando (Jermyn Street) and Warrior Queens (Sadler’s Wells). Lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford works across the UK and Europe in theatre and dance. His credits include TRAPLORD (Studio, Southbank Festival Series 2023), BACON (UK Tour), Breeding (King’s Head Theatre), Akshay Sharma: Can This Be A Temple? (The Place, UK Tour), Vortex (Russell Maliphant Dance Company); Shades of Blue (Sadler’s Wells, Matsena Productions, BBC Arts); Natalia Osipova: Force of Nature (Bloom Dance Project/ World Tour); Grimeboy (Birmingham Rep) and Dance for Ukraine (London Coliseum). In 2019, Ryan received the ‘Michael Northern Award for Excellence in Lighting Design’ from the Association of Lighting Designers. Fight and Intimacy direction is by Claire Llewellyn of RC-Annie Ltd and casting by Becky Parris.
