Keith Allen, Phil Davis, Paapa Essiedu, Rupert Graves, Gary Kemp, John Simm and Maggie Steed have joined the extraordinary company of Pinter at the Pinter, the unprecedented season featuring all twenty of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays, running from September 2018 to February 2019, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Nobel Prize winner’s death. The plays are directed by Jamie Lloyd, Patrick Marber, Ed Stambollouian, Lyndsey Turner and Lia Williams, with design by Soutra Gilmour, lighting design by Jon Clark and Richard Howell, and sound and music by George Dennisand Ben & Max Ringham. Further casting to be announced.
The highly-anticipated season will open with Pinter’s incendiary political works One for the Road, Mountain Language and The New World Order, directed by Jamie Lloyd, and Ashes to Ashes directed by Lia Williams, who is currently wowing critics and audiences alike in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Donmar Warehouse. The cast will include Paapa Essiedu, who won massive acclaim for his portrayal of Hamlet at the RSC and was recently named a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, alongside Maggie Steed (Channel 4’s Chewing Gum), who returns to The Jamie Lloyd Company having played Queen Margaret opposite Martin Freeman in Richard III at Trafalgar Studios. These plays will be performed in rep – for 26 performances only – with the playful and provocative miniature masterpieces The Lover and The Collection, which feature stage and screen legend David Suchet and John Macmillan (Edmund in BBC2’s recentKing Lear).
Director Lia Williams said: “I was knocked out when The Jamie Lloyd Company asked me to direct the electrifyingAshes to Ashes and I’m thrilled to be working with the hugely talented Paapa Essiedu. Harold meant the world to me. He could be funny, lacerating and as sensitive as a butterfly all at once. I’ve acted in seven of Harold’s plays; he has been one of my greatest influences in the theatre. This is a very personal endeavour. I will do my best for you, Harold.”
