The full casting has been announced for Glyn Maxwell’s commissioned adaptation of the much loved short story Babette’s Feast by the revered Danish storyteller Karen Blixen.
Bringing their innovative style to Print Room at the Coronet, Bill Buckhurst reunites with designer Simon Kenny, following their hugely successful collaboration on "Sweeney Todd" at Harrington's Pie and Mash Shop. The 2015 production transferred to the West End and is now playing off-Broadway at New York's Barrow Street Theatre. With new music composed by Olly Fox, this world premiere, telling the story of one community’s willingness to accept a stranger in need, begins previews on 9th May.
Karen Blixen is widely recognised for the portrayal of her by Meryl Streep in the Academy Award Winning film, Out of Africa, as well Gabriel Axel’s acclaimed screen adaptation of Babette’s Feast, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Blixen wrote some of Denmark’s most-loved fiction from the 1900’s to her death in 1962, often under pseudonyms, most prolifically as Isak Dinesen who is credited as the author of Babette’s Feast. Glyn Maxwell’s new adaptation will tell the story of Martine and Philippa, two sisters living in a remote coastal village with their father, The Dean. They live pious, simple lives until Babette arrives at their door, a refugee fleeing from the French Civil War seeking sanctuary. The sisters welcome her into their home and she works as their cook, feeding the locals for many years. In a selfless act of thanksgiving, Babette creates a lavish feast for the people of the town.
Joseph Marcell, best known for his role as Geoffrey in Fresh Prince of Bel Air, makes his Print Room at the Coronet debut in the roles of The Dean and Lorens Lowenheilm. Joining Marcell on the Coronet stage, Sheila Atim, recently seen on stage in the National Theatre’s Les Blancs, will be playing the titular role of Babette. Brideshead Revisted star Diana Quick will take on the part of Martine, with her on-stage sister Philippa being played by Majorie Yates, recognised for her role in Channel 4’s Shameless. Norma Attalah, Amanda Boxer, Richard Clews, Ladi Emeruwa, Henry Everett, Whoopie Van Raam and Rachel Winters complete the cast.
PRINT ROOM AT THE CORONET
The Print Room began life in September 2010 in a converted printing warehouse just off Westbourne Grove, with a mission to present an exciting mixture of theatre, dance, concerts, art exhibitions and a variety of multidisciplinary collaborations. The theatre is now realising its unique artistic vision in its new, permanent home, Notting Hill’s iconic Coronet.
http://www.the-print-room.org/
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Sheila Atim has been a part of hugely acclaimed productions such as the recent Shakespeare Trilogy at Donmar Warehouse and National Theatre’s Les Blancs. Other theatre and television credits include: The Tempest (St Ann's Warehouse New York USA); Black Lives Black Words – The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre); Volpone; Love’s Sacrifice; The Jew of Malta (RSC); Hopelessly Devoted (Paines Plough); Rachel (Finborough Theatre); Klook’s Last Stand (Park Theatre); Ghosttown (Pilot Theatre) and I Live with Models.
Amanda Boxer was born in New York and trained at LAMDA. She won Best Actress in the London Fringe Awards for Strange Snow (Theatro Technis). Her acting career has seen her take part in Blue Heart (Bristol Old Vic and The Orange Tree); Medea; The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot (Almeida Theatre); Uncle Vanya (St James); Relative Values (Harold Pinter Theatre); The Speed Twins (Riverside); Prisoner of Second Avenue (Vaudeville); The Sea Plays (Old Vic Tunnels); The House of Bernarda Alba and The Graduate (Gielgud Theatre); A Touch of the Poet (Young Vic / West End); The Painter; Macbeth (Arcola Theatre); The Destiny of Me (Finborough Theatre); Many Roads to Paradise (Finborough Theatre and Jermyn Street Theatre); The Arab Israeli Cookbook (Gate / Tricycle Theatre); The Pain and the Itch; The Strip (Royal Court); Cling To Me Like Ivy (Birmingham Rep); The Rivals (Theatr Clwyd); The Yiddish Queen Lear (Southwark Playhouse / Bridewell Theatre); Come Blow Your Horn; The Fall Guy; The Misanthrope; Absurd Person Singular (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Way of The World (Cambridge Theatre Company); A State of Affairs (The Duchess Theatre). Boxer’s television and film appearances include: Silent Witness; Doctors; Casualty; Bodies; The Shell Seekers; Trial and Retribution; Chalk; Unnatural Pursuits; Road Rage; Goodbye My Love; Cider With Rosie and Saving Private Ryan; Together; Things I Do For You; Bad Behaviour.
Henry Everett’s theatre credits include The Rivals (Bristol Old Vic & UK Tour); German Skerries (Orange Tree Theatre); Richard II (Globe Theatre); Man and Superman (National Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Michael Grandage Company); The Nutcracker (Theatre Royal Bath); Sold (Theatre 503); All Creatures Great and Small (Gala Theatre, Durham); The Suitcase Kid (Orange Tree Theatre); My Brother the Robot (Tall Stories); Autobahn (King’s Head); Fool for Love; Reigen (GBS Theatre / RADA); The Cherry Orchard (Dog Orange); The Taming of the Shrew; The Importance of Being Earnest; The Comedy of Errors; The Merry Wives of Windsor; Macbeth (Oxford Shakespeare Company); A Christmas Carol (Shaw Theatre); Private Lives; Dead of Night (Sheringham Little Theatre); Sleeping Beauty (The Roses, Tewkesbury); Lovers From Hell (Oval House Theatre); The Merry Wives of Windsor (Changeling Theatre Company); I-Confess (Tangled Feet). Television and Film appearances include; Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story; Emmerdale; The Bill; Switch; Routes; WMD; Milk Man.
Joseph Marcell has appeared in Frost; Holby City; Rough Crossing; Eastenders; Jericho; The Professionals; Crown Court; Juliet Bravo; Fancy Wanders; Empire Road; Anthony and Cleopatra; End of the Line; Rumpole and the Golden Thread; First Sight; The Return of Shelley; Dr Who; The Bill; Outpost; Desmonds; Boon; Die Kinder; Runaway Bay; Brothers and Sisters; McLibel. Marcell is best known for his role as Geoffrey in the NBC sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Stage credits include Much Ado About Nothing; Coriolanus; Under the Black Flag (Shakespeare’s Globe); Radio Golf; Let There Be Love; Gem Of The Ocean; King Hedley II; Walk Hard; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Tricycle Theatre); Breakfast with Mugabe (Theatre Royal Bath); Hamlet (Haymarket, Basingstoke); Richard III Part II (Paines Plough); Crates on Barrels; Our Friends from the North; The Brothers Menechmi; Little Malcolm; Coriolanus; Anthony and Cleopatra; Two Gentlemen of Verona; The Great White Hope; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (RSC); Measure for Measure (US Tour); Henry VI Part III; Romeo and Juliet; The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare & Co); The Knack; The Man; Dr Faustus (Sheffield); One Fine Day; A Dying Business (Riverside Studios); Motor Car (Paines Plough / National Theatre); Anchorman (Royal Court / Coventry); Macbeth; Death of a Salesman (Leicester); Sherlock Holmes (RSC / Broadway); Livingstone and Sechele; Split Second; Othello (Lyric Hammersmith); Master Harold and the Boys; Peer Gynt (National Theatre); Black Star (Octagon); Julius Caesar; Creon (Leicester / Tour); Twelfth Night (Birmingham Rep). Film appearances include: Cry Freedom; Playing Away; Sioux City; The Loser.
Marcel has also directed: Mad Wogs and Englishmen (Cockpit); The Sapping; The Island (RSC); Othello (Arts Theatre).
Diana Quick is an English actress who trained at Oxford University. Best known for her starring role in Brideshead Revisited. Quick has appeared in Theatre productions such as: Electra (Old Vic); The Big Meal; The American Plan (Theatre Royal Bath); Midnight Your Time (HighTide); Aristo (Minerva); Single Spies (UK Tour); Mother Courage and Her Children; Ghosts (English Touring Theatre); You Never Can Tell (Theatre Royal Bath / West End); Anna and the Tropics (Hampstead Theatre); After Mrs Rochester (Shared Experience); Mother Teresa is Dead; The Old Neighbourhood; The Sea; King Lear (Royal Court); Be My Baby (Soho Theatre); Hamlet; The Changeling; The Women Pirates (RSC); A Map of the World; Troilus and Cressida; Tamburlaine; Plunder and Phaedra Brittanica (National Theatre). Her television and film appearances include: The Living and the Dead; Houdini and Doyle; The Missing; Case Histories; Inspector George Gently; Silk; Law and Order UK; Lewis; New Tricks; The Queen; The Protectors; Kingdom; Catwalk Dogs; Sensitive Skin; Midsomer Murders; Poirot; Dalziel and Pascoe; Aristocrats; Rasputin; Dandelion Dead; Alleyn Mysteries; Inspector Morse; Clarissa; The Orchid House; The Price of the Bride; Alas Smith and Jones; The Justice Game; Minder; Cariani and the Courtesans; Phantom of the Opera; The Woman in White; and The Nanny State; Mother’s Milk; Love / Loss; The Revenger’s Tragedy; A.K.A.; The Discovery of Heaven; Saving Grace; Vigo; The Leading Man; Nostradamus; The Misadventures of Mr Wilt; Vroom; 1919; Max Mon Amour; Ordeal by Innocence; The Odd Job; The Big Sleep; The Duelists; Nicholas and Alexandra; A Private Enterprise.
Ladi Emeruwa trained at LAMDA, graduating in 2012. Since then, he made his professional stage debut playing Hamlet in the Shakespeare's Globe 'Globe to Globe' two-year international tour of Hamlet which started at The Globe itself in April 2014. Emeruwa has also undertaken television and film roles such as Into the Badlands; Monday and Hearts and Minds.
Norma Atallah has performed in theatre productions such as In the Heights (King’s Cross Theatre); Daisy Pulls It Off (Ovation Productions / Globe Theatre); Pirates of Penzance (Kilworth House Theatre); Stepping Out (Windsor / UK Tour); Nine (Donmar Warehouse); Just One World (Salzberg & Stevenson); Beggars Opera; Canterville Ghost (Bridewell Theatre); Les Miserables; Cats; Oklahoma (West End); Pirates of Penzance (West End). Atallah’s television and film credits include: Sound of Music Live; Evermoor; Eastenders; Genie in the House; Friday Night Project; Rome; Chucklevision; Judge John Deed; Hale and Pace; The Biz; Practice Makes Perfect and Beauty and the Beast; Mortdecai; Les Miserables; The Kid; The Story of F***; Mamma Mia!; Yentl.
Rachel Winters trained at Central School of Speech and Drama and most recently performed in Bill Buckhurst’s Sleeping Beauty (Watermill Theatre), other theatre credits include Paramore (Hightide Festival); Twelfth Night (Reading Between The Lines); Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe); Stickman (Leicester Square Theatre/ UK tour); Dracula (Blackeyed Theatre UK tour); Pinocchio (Hull Truck); Romeo and Juliet (Catford Broadway Theatre); As You Like It / Comedy of Errors (Guildford Shakespeare Company). She also regularly takes part in the Read not Dead rehearsed readings at Shakespeare's Globe. Television credits include Borgia (Epic Films/ Canal Plus) where she plays Hieronyma Borgia in Season Two, Doctors (BBC) and SHaLT, a documentary by the V&A. Rachel also plays the lead role in Vicious, a multi-award winning horror film that was released at the beginning of the year.
Richard Clews trained at Rose Bruford College and mostly recently starred in BBC 2’s The Last Kingdom, other television credits include: Atlantis; A Touch of Frost; Sally Lockhart Mysteries; Birds of a Feather; Hornblower; The Detectives; Paradise Club. His theatre credits include: The Government Inspector (Birmingham Rep/Tour); Rebecca (Kneehigh/National Tour); Julius Caesar; Two Gentlemen of Verona; Wendy & Peter (RSC); Dr Faustus; God of Soho; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Timon of Athens (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Rest Is Silence (dreamthinkspeak Comp.); Nineteen Eighty-Four (Manchester Royal Exchange); The Spanish Tragedy (Arcola); The Game of Life (The Yard); Casanova; I Can’t Wake Up; I Weep at My Piano (Told By An Idiot Comp.); Nakamitsu (The Gate); The Night Before Christmas (Coventry Belgrade); Unheimlich Spine (David Glass Ensemble); Arcane (Opera Circus); The Threepenny Opera (Northern Sinfonia/Northern Stage); Andorra; Twelfth Night; Blood Wedding; The Wasp Factory; They Shoot Horses Don't They?; A Clockwork Orange (Northern Stage); Hedda Gabler; The Cherry Orchard; The Odd Couple (Dundee Rep); Waiting for Godot (Salisbury Playhouse); Ghosts (EST – Tour of Canada); Exchange (West End & BBC World Service).
Marjorie Yates is a British actress best known for her role as Carol Fisher in the Channel 4 drama Shameless. Other television and film appearances include Cabbage and Pat; Doctors; Above Suspicion; Heartbeat; Massive; Casualty; Shameless; Dalziel and Pascoe; Sons and Lovers; The Bill; Heartbeat; Danny’s Story; Annie’s Bar; Guardians; The Governor; Fighting for Gemma; Ruth Rendall; Underbelly; Boon; June, Edge; The Long Day Closes; Soulboy; Wetherby; Priests of Love; The Optimists. Theatre roles include: Untold Stories (West Yorkshire Playhouse); A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Liverpool Everyman / Kingston Theatre); Orpheus Descending (Royal Exchange); This Happy Breed; Another Door Closed (Theatre Royal Bath); Ahasverus (RSC / Hampstead); Origin of the Species (Arcola Theatre); Twelfth Night (RSC); Three Tall Women (Oxford Playhouse); Honeymoon (Royal Court Theatre); Star Quality (Apollo Theatre); The Daughter-In-Law (Young Vic); An Inspector Calls (Garrick Theatre); Stages (National Theatre); The Glass Menagerie (Bristol Old Vic); Master Builder (RSC).
Whoopie van Raam is delighted to be making her professional debut in Riotous Company’s Out of Blixen, having graduated from Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Her roles whilst training include Lulu & Top Girls, Mephisto & Into the Woods. She has also appeared in short films including the upcoming Advertentie.
Bill Buckhurst directed the hugely successful Sweeney Todd for Tooting Arts Club (Harrington’s Pie and Mash Shop, West End and Broadway). Also for Tooting Arts Club, Buckhurst directed Barbarians in 2015 Tinderbox in 2011, Barbarians in 2012 and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2014. He previously co-directed the international touring production of Shakespeare’s Globe’s Hamlet alongside Dominic Dromgoole. His other directing credits include The Vegemite Tales in the West End and numerous touring productions for Shakespeare’s Globe.
Olly Fox has been composing music for nearly 20 years, and has composed over 100 scores for theatre productions, many radio plays, television and short films in collaboration with the National Theatre, RSC, Royal Court, Shakespeare’s Globe, Channel 4, BBC, and various TV and film production companies. All kinds of commissions have yielded all kinds of styles and genres from Cuban Son Montuno (for Marianne Elliott’s highly-acclaimed Much Ado About Nothing, RSC), Jazz-swing and bittersweet barroom Blues (The Life & Times Of Vivienne Vyle, Saunders & French/BBC), Soul, Ska & Reggae (The Frontline, Shakespeare’s Globe), cinematic thriller (Inside The Mind Of Hitler, BBC Timewatch), Romantic Classical and Baroque (Royal Collection, BBC/Endemol), and a contemporary classical song-cycle for the internationally-acclaimed counter tenor, Robin Blaze, as Cesare, in Caligari for BBC Radio 3. Some examples of work include: The Life & Times Of Vivienne Vyle (Saunders & French/BBC), No Ball Games (Irresistable Pictures), Nosferatu and Caligari (BBC Radio 3), and for theatre: Women Beware Women (National Theatre),Troilus & Cressida (Shakespeare’s Globe), Therese Raquin (National Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (RSC).
Simon Kenny is a UK based set and costume designer. Future productions include Sleeping Beauty at the Watermill, and the New York off-Broadway transfer of Tooting Arts Club’s pie-shop Sweeney Todd at Barrow Street Theatre. His recent designs for theatre include Kander and Ebb’s The World Goes Round (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe); Caresses at HOME; Barbarians at the abandoned St Martin’s School of Art building in Soho, and the West End transfer of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tooting Arts Club); The Ladykillers (Watermill); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); Measure For Measure (Cambridge Arts Theatre); a major new national touring production of Saturday Night Fever for Theatre Royal Bath; The Light of Heart and Ghosts at Clwyd Theatr Cymru; The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare’s Globe; the UK premiere of Noel Coward’s This Was A Man (Finborough); the London transfer of In The Next Room or the vibrator play at St James Theatre; two American Seasons at the Ustinov Studio, including 4000 Miles (also the Print Room), Fifty Words (also Arcola), Red Light Winter, In A Garden, and In The Next Room or the vibrator play (Winner - Best New Play, Theatre Awards UK); Sherlock’s Last Case and Sleuth (Watermill); Island at the National Theatre and the world premiere of Philip Ridley’s Feathers in the Snow (Southwark Playhouse).
Glyn Maxwell’s plays include Liberty, which was staged at Shakespeare's Globe in 2008, The Lifeblood, which was awarded British Theatre Guide's 'Best Play' on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004, and The Only Girl In the World, which was a Time Out Critics’ Choice at the Arcola in 2008. Several of his plays have been staged in New York City by the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, for whom he is Resident Writer. He has adapted several plays for Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre in Chester, including Wind in the Willows and Cyrano de Bergerac, which he also adapted for BBC Radio in 2015. This summer his new versions of Alice in Wonderland and The Beggars’ Opera will be the first plays staged at Chester’s new £37m Storyhouse Theatre. He has published many poetry collections, including Pluto, Hide Now, and The Breakage, all of which were shortlisted for the Forward or T.S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was awarded a Cholmondeley Prize from the Society of Authors in 2014 for his poetry. His critical guidebook On Poetry (2012) has been described as ‘a modern classic’ (The Spectator) and ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read’ (The Guardian), and last year he published its sequel, the novel Drinks With Dead Poets. His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughter, composed by David Bruce, which was nominated for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Olivier Awards in 2014, The Lion’s Face, composed by Elena Langer, and Nothing, which premiered at Glyndebourne in 2016.
LISTINGS
9 May – 3 June 2017
Evenings: 7.30pm, Matinees: Saturdays 3pm
Babette’s Feast
Based on a novella by Karen Blixen
Press Night: Monday 15th May, 7pm
Adapted by Glyn Maxwell
Directed by Bill Buckhurst
