Almanac Arts has announced full casting for the premiere of Lizzie Nunnery’s new play with songs To Have To Shoot Irishmen which will open at the Omnibus Theatre in London from 2-20 Oct and then tour till the 6 November.
Inspired by the true murder of Irish pacifist Francis Sheehy Skeffington by a British soldier during the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, the new play conjures the shattering impact of those events on his wife and feminist activist Hanna, on William the teenage soldier who guarded Frank, and on Vane the rebellious commander who bears the news of Frank’s death to Hanna.
Playing the role of Frank will be Gerard Kearns who is best known for playing Ian Gallagher in Shameless and appearing in the BAFTA Award-Winning The Mark of Cain, both for Channel 4. His other credits include The Last Kingdom, BBC; Looking for Eric, Trespass Against Us and Mike Leigh’s forthcoming film Peterloo, all Film 4 and onstage in The Accrington Pals and Much Ado About Nothing, Royal Exchange, Manchester. Next year he will be seen in the HBO/Sky miniseries Chernobyl.
Joining Kearns will be Elinor Lawless (The End of Hope, Soho Theatre; King Charles III, Wyndham’s Theatre and Bakkhai, Almedia Theatre) as Hanna; Robbie O’Neill (Little Boy Blue, ITV and Jonathan Strange and Dr Norrell, BBC) as William and Russell Richardson (An August Bank Holiday Lark, Northern Broadsides and A View from the Bridge, Bolton Octagon) as Vane.
Writer Lizzie Nunnery is an award-winning playwright and celebrated singer-songwriter. Lizzie’s first play Intemperance (Liverpool Everyman, Sept 2007) was shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth Award. In 2016 she premiered Narvik at the Liverpool Playhouse, which went on to tour to great acclaim. The production was shortlisted for the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and won Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards 2017.
Directed by Gemma Kerr (Hitting Town, Southwark Playhouse) and produced by Almanac Arts and Claire Bigley, To Have to Shoot Irishmen will open at Omnibus Theatre from 2-20 October and will then tour until 6 November
For more information on To Have To Shoot Irishmen click here.
