Following the critical success of their co-production of E.M.Forster’s The Machine Stops, Pilot Theatre will once again join forces with York Theatre Royal to premiere Tony-Award Nominee Bryony Lavery’s (Frozen, Stockholm and Beautiful Burnout) new adaptation of Graham Greene’s iconic 1938 novel of sin and redemption Brighton Rock.
Directed by Pilot Theatre’s new Artistic Director Esther Richardson and featuring a soundtrack composed by the acclaimed singer, musician and composer Hannah Peel, Brighton Rock will open at York Theatre Royal from 16 February till 3 March and then tour till the 26 May.
As two seventeen-year olds, Pinkie and Rose get embroiled in a vicious gang war in Brighton where one brutal murder leads to the next. The police are impassive – but the courageous and life embracing Ida Arnold wants the truth. Nothing scares her. Whatever the cost, she’ll see justice is done.
Written in 1938, Graham Greene’s classic novel of good and evil was first adapted for the stage at the Garrick Theatre with Richard Attenborough playing Pinkie, a role he resumed in the iconic 1947 film version.
In 2010 Greene’s novel was remade, setting it in 1964, with Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Helen Mirren. In 1993 Vicky Featherstone directed David Hurlock’s stage adaptation of the novel at West Yorkshire Playhouse and in 2004 John Barry and Don Black wrote a musical version which ran at the Almeida Theatre.
Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, commissioned by Birmingham Repertory Theatre, won the TMA Best Play Award and was then produced on Broadway where it was nominated for four Tony Awards. A revival of the play will be staged at the Haymarket Theatre in February 2018.
