Theatre Royal Bath today announces A Season of UK Premieres from the Americas at the Ustinov Studio opening next month. The Model Apartment by Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies, directed by Laurence Boswell will run from 22 November to 22 December. This will be followed by Tanya Barfield’s play with music, Blue Door, directed by Eleanor Rhode from 7 February to 9 March 2019, and a third production, to be announced, will complete the season.
The Model Apartment will star Diana Quick, Ian Gelder, Emily Bruni and Enyi Okoronkwo, and be directed by Laurence Boswell.
1980s. Max and Lola, two elderly Holocaust survivors, are retiring to Florida from Brooklyn, finally able to escape their difficult daughter and life’s stresses and strains. But their new life in the Sunshine State turns dark very quickly. Their deluxe condo is not ready to live in, they’ve been asked to stay temporarily in a ‘model apartment’, and then history begins to catch up with them in the most devastating way.
In this brilliant black comedy, Max and Lola discover that if they are ever truly going to be able to retire, they must first confront the demons of their past.
Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door will receive its first ever UK staging at the Ustinov Studio in 2019. The play, with original songs, portrays a searing examination of family, identity and the African-American male experience. It will be directed by Eleanor Rhode (Boudica, Shakespeare’s Globe) and will star Ray Fearon and Fehinti Balogun.
Lewis, a prominent African-American professor of mathematics is just trying to lead a normal, quiet and successful existence. But when he refuses to attend the Million Man March, his wife of twenty-five years suddenly leaves him, and his life is thrown into turmoil. Finding himself suffering from a disorientating insomnia, he inadvertently conjures three generations of his ancestors, who each reveal the hardships and victories that have shaped their lives. Lyrical, funny and poignant, Lewis’s journey grappling at the intersection of his own identity, race and culture, encapsulates more than a hundred years of American history.
