Full casting is announced for Foxfinder’s West End premiere which begins performances at the Ambassadors Theatre on 6 September and will play a strictly limited season until 5 January. Olivier nominee Bryony Hannah (Call the Midwife) and Paul Nicholls (Law & Order, The C-Word, EastEnders) will join the previously announced Heida Reed (Poldark) and Olivier winner Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones’ Ramsay Bolton, Misfits) in Dawn King’s unsettling and darkly comic drama.
Foxfinder will be directed by Rachel O’Riordan, whose production of Killology at the Royal Court won her the 2018 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre.
England is in crisis. Fields are flooded, food is scarce and fear of the red beast grips the land.
William Bloor, a foxfinder, arrives at Judith and Samuel Covey’s farm to investigate a suspected fox infestation. The Covey’s harvest has failed to meet their target and the government wants to know why. Trained from childhood, William is fixated on his mission to unearth the animals that must be to blame for the Covey's woes. But as the hunt progresses, William finds more questions than answers…
First performed at London’s Finborough Theatre in 2011, Foxfinder opened to rave reviews and won Dawn King the 2013 Royal National Theatre Foundation Playwright award, a Pearson Award Bursary as Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough, the Papatango Theatre Company new writing competition and the Off West End award for Most Promising Playwright.
On the play’s Finborough premiere the Guardian’s Michael Billington said “King’s play shines out like a beacon […] it remains an arresting and individual work that haunts the mind long after you've seen it.”
Bryony Hannah is best known for playing Sister Mary Cynthia in six series of the hugely successful BBC period drama Call the Midwife. She was last in the West End playing Mary Tilford in The Children’s Hour (Harold Pinter Theatre) opposite Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss, for which she was Olivier nominated. Bryony’s other previous credits include the ominous ITV crime-drama Unforgotten, 2012 BBC comedy Dead Boss opposite Sharon Horgan and Jennifer Saunders, as well as ITV’s 2009 drama Above Suspicion with Kelly Reilly and Ciaran Hinds. Her film work includes roles in The Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending and Ricky Gervais’ Cemetery Junction.
Paul Nicholls became a household name when he joined EastEnders as the troubled Joe Wicks in 1996. He has most recently appeared in Channel 4’s hit drama Ackley Bridge. An accomplished stage actor, Paul’s previous theatre work includes Long Day’s Journey Into Night alongside Jessica Lange, Paul Rudd and Charles Dance (Lyric Theatre), Vincent in Brixton opposite Emily Blunt (National Theatre), Billy Liar (Bush Theatre), The Shawshank Redemption (UK Tour), The Promise (Tricycle Theatre), Rufus Norris’ West End production of Festen (Lyric Theatre) and Telstar (Hampstead Theatre). Paul’s television and film career over the past two decades has seen him appear in acclaimed dramas such as The C Word alongside Sheridan Smith for the BBC, Channel 4’s four-part thriller The Fear, Kay Mellor’s BBC drama In The Club and ITV’s Law and Order: UK. His film work includes Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, If Only and WW1 drama The Trench opposite Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw.
Iwan Rheon trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and made his professional stage debut in Eight Miles High (Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool) before his breakthrough role as the haunted, suicidal Moritz in the musical Spring Awakening, for which he won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical.
In 2009, Iwan joined the cast of E4’s BAFTA award-winning superhero drama Misfits which to date has been broadcast in 100 territories. Iwan returned to the stage in 2010 in the National Theatre Wales' production of John Osborne's The Devil Inside Him and in 2011, Aleksey Scherbak’s Remembrance Day (Royal Court). He made his cinematic debut in Resistance, a 2011 Welsh film based on the novel by Owen Sheers starring Andrea Riseborough and Michael Sheen. Other film work includes Wild Bill, Wasteland, Daisy Winters and The Liberator.
Between 2013 and 2016 Iwan played the villainous Ramsay Bolton in HBO’s multi-award winning Game of Thrones. Other television credits include ITV’s Vicious, opposite Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour, BBC One’s Our Girl, Netflix sci-fi thriller Residue, and for Sky One Riviera with Adrian Lester and Julia Stiles, and Adolf The Artist alongside Rupert Grint. Most recently Iwan played the lead role in Marvel’s ABC drama series Inhumans and it has just been announced he will be playing Motley Crue’s guitarist, Mick Mars, in biopic The Dirt alongside Douglas Booth. Iwan will also be seen in the forthcoming films Berlin, I Love You and as the lead in WWII thriller Hurricane.
Heida Reed joined the award-winning BBC drama Poldark in 2015 and has since had roles in Silent Witness, also for the BBC, and as Ingrid in the romantic comedy One Day opposite Anne Hathaway. She has also been nominated for an Icelandic Academy Award for the titular lead role in television series Stella Blómkvist. Having trained at London’s Drama Centre, Heida’s previous stage work includes Scarlet (Southwark Playhouse) and the 2011 revival of Top Girls (Trafalgar Studios).
Dawn King is an award-winning writer working in theatre, film, TV and radio. Dawn’s 2013 play Ciphers, a co-production between Out Of Joint, the Bush Theatre and Exeter Northcott, toured the UK and has been produced internationally. Ciphers was longlisted for the James Tait Black drama prize 2014 and is currently being adapted into a screenplay for Cowboy Films. Her most recent stage play, a major new adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, was a co-production between the Royal and Derngate Theatre and the Touring Consortium, and toured the UK in 2015.
Dawn’s short film The Karman Line, starring Olivia Colman and Shaun Dooley, played festivals around the world and won eighteen awards including Best Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards, and was nominated for a BAFTA. Currently, Dawn is working on two plays; The Light and Salt, which is a commission from the National Theatre and will be performed by youth theatre groups around the country as part of Connections 2019. She also writes regularly for radio and has had radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 4 Extra and BBC Radio 3.
Director Rachel O’Riordan is the artistic director of the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (The Stage Awards’ 2018 Regional Theatre of the Year) and was previously artistic director of Perth Theatre and founding artistic director of Ransom Productions, Belfast. In 2016 her production of Iphigenia in Splott transferred from the Sherman Theatre to the National Theatre and toured the UK. The critically acclaimed production also won Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards and the James Tait Black award. Other theatre credits include Killology (Sherman Theatre/Royal Court Theatre – Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre), Unfaithful (Traverse Theatre), The Seafarer (Perth Theatre/Lyric, Belfast), Carol Ann Duffy’s Grimm Tales (Library Theatre Manchester, M.E.N. Best Family Show award winner), and Hurricane (Soho Theatre). At the Sherman Theatre Rachel has directed Bird (also at Manchester Royal Exchange), The Cherry Orchard adapted by Gary Owen, The Weir (also at Tobacco Factory Theatre) and Arabian Nights (Wales Drama Award winner for Best Show for Children and Young People).
Foxfinder is designed by Gary McCann with lighting design by Paul Anderson. Simon Slater is composer and sound designer for the production.
FOXFINDER
The Ambassadors Theatre
West Street
London WC2H 9ND
Thursday 6 September – Saturday 5 January
Press Night: Thursday 13 September 7pm
Monday – Saturday 7:45pm
Wednesday & Saturday 3pm
Christmas Schedule:
Extra matinee: Wednesday 19 December, Friday 28 December & Wednesday 2 January 3pm
Matinee only: Monday 24 December & Monday 31 January 3pm
No performances Tuesday 25 – Wednesday 26 December, Tuesday 1 January
