The Old Vic announces casting for The Greatest Wealth’s newly commissioned monologue First, Do No Harm, written by Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo and presented as part of Your Old Vic. To complete the series celebrating the NHS, curated by Lolita Chakrabarti, Olivier Award winner Sharon D Clarke will perform this new commission, directed by Adrian Lester, which will air as a special feature on Sunday 5 July, 7pm, to coincide with the NHS’ 72nd birthday.
The Old Vic is a registered charity in receipt of no regular public subsidy and with its doors currently closed is in great financial difficulty. Yet, despite this, the theatre remains committed to staying connected with audiences through the provision of free content and The Greatest Wealth is presented as part of Your Old Vic, a totally free programme of creative events and projects.
Bernardine Evaristo said:
‘I welcomed the challenge of writing about the NHS, hugely enjoyed working with the team behind it, and love the casting of Sharon D Clarke, whose amazing career I have followed for decades. Writing about the NHS made me reflect very deeply on what an incredible asset it is for us in Britain. Long may it look after our health care!’
In 2018, The Old Vic commissioned and presented a series of monologues to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS, curated by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Adrian Lester. This will be a brand new commission in this series for 2020 to mark the dedication of those in the service at this time of national crisis. Spanning each decade since the creation of the NHS, all eight of the existing monologues have been released every Thursday on The Old Vic’s YouTube channel. Writers have included Moira Buffini, Lolita Chakrabarti, Seiriol Davies, Matilda Ibini, Courttia Newland, Meera Syal, Jack Thorne and Paul Unwin.
This series also serves as a precursor to a major Old Vic artistic celebration of the NHS, from inception to present day, currently in development for the 2021 season. Details to follow.
For up-to-date information people can visit oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/your-old-vic or follow @oldvictheatre #YourOldVic on social media.
One Voice is a series of monologues, funded by the TS Eliot Estate, celebrating the rawest of theatre forms – a single voice on a stage without scenery and with nothing to rely on but words.
Sharon D Clarke. Theatre work includes: Death of a Salesman – Critic’s Circle Award for Best Actress (Young Vic and Piccadilly Theatre); Blues in the Night, The Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes (Kiln Theatre); Caroline, or Change – Olivier Award and British Black Theatre Award for Best Actress (Playhouse Theatre); The Life – OFFIES for Best Supporting Actress (Southwark Playhouse); Mother Goose, King The Musical, Once On This Island, (Hackney Empire); Pigs and Dogs (Royal Court Theatre); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Everyman, Amen Corner – Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress, Guys and Dolls (National Theatre); Romeo & Julie (Rose Theatre Kingston); Porgy & Bess (Regent’s Park Open Air). West End work includes: Ghost – Manchester Theatre Award for Best Actress (Manchester Opera House
and Piccadilly Theatre); Hairspray, Chicago, We Will Rock You – WhatsOnStage Award for Best Supporting Actress, Disney’s The Lion King, Fame, Rent, Once On This Island and Mama I Want to Sing. Television work includes: Holby City, Informer, Doctor Who, Silent Witness, Kiri, Doctors, Death in Paradise, New Tricks, Psychobitches, The Shadow Line, Waking The Dead, Last Choir Standing – Panel Judge, The Singing Detective, Waffle The Wonder Dog, The Crust, Thunderbirds Are Go, Tree Fu Tom, and Where’s Boo; Film includes: Rocketman, Tau, Sugarhouse, Secret Society, Beautiful People, & Broken Glass. In 2019 Sharon received the inaugural Black British Theatre Awards Lifetime Recognition Award. In 2017 Sharon received an MBE for Services to Drama.
Bernadine Evaristo (Writer). Bernardine won the Booker Prize 2019 for her eighth book, the novel, Girl, Woman, Other (Penguin), becoming the first black woman and first black British person to win it. It follows the inter-connecting lives of twelve primarily black British women aged 19 to 93 who are of various sexualities, cultural backgrounds, classes and occupations. It was also a Barack Obama ‘Top 19 Book for 2019’ and has been nominated for many prizes including The Women’s Prize, British Book Awards, Indie Book Awards and the Orwell Prize. In 2020 she became the first woman of colour to top the UK bestseller list for paperback fiction and the novel is being translated into thirty languages. Her other books include Mr Loverman, The Emperor’s Babe, Lara, Soul Tourists and Blonde Roots. As a literary activist, she has founded several arts inclusion projects since the 1980s including The Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme in the 2007 and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2012. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and its current Vice Chair, and she was appointed an MBE in 2009.
Adrian Lester OBE (Director). Adrian is an award-winning actor and director. His career started with a string of successful West End productions including Company, for which he received an Olivier Award, Six Degrees of Separation and before he took the lead role in Mike Nichol's movie Primary Colors. Other film roles include Sweeney Todd, Day After Tomorrow, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Grey Lady, Dust and the Oscar nominated Mary Queen of Scots. Adrian is also well known for his TV work including the long running BBC1 series Hustle, Sky Atlantic’s Riviera, US sitcom Girlfriends, The Rook, Undercover, Trauma and the recent BBC lockdown series Staged. Directing credits include Hustle, Riviera and short Of Mary. Adrian has played the title roles in Henry V
and Othello (National Theatre), for which he won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor, Rosalind in As You Like It, Ira Aldridge in Red Velvet in London’s West End and New York, for which is won the Critic’s Circle Award for Best Actor and Hamlet in Peter Brook’s The Tragedy Of Hamlet (London, Paris, Japan and New York). Forthcoming projects include the long-awaiting new BBC drama Life and, alongside wife, actress and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, will be releasing A Working Diary (Bloomsbury).
Lolita Chakrabarti is an award-winning actress and writer. Recent acting credits include – Fanny & Alexander (The Old Vic); Hamlet (RADA); Criminal (Netflix); Born to Kill (Channel 4); Delicious (Sky One); Riviera (Sky Atlantic); The Casual Vacancy (BBC/HBO) and the forthcoming Wheel of Time (Amazon Prime). Her writing credits include her stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s Booker prize winning novel Life of Pi (Sheffield Crucible 2019, due to open at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, 2020) which won four UK Theatre Award including Best New Play and the WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play. Lolita’s adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities in collaboration with 59 Productions, Rambert dance company and Sidi Larbi Cherkhaoui had its world premiere at Manchester International Festival and Brisbane Festival last year. Lolita was the dramaturg for Message In A Bottle working with Kate Prince, ZooNation and Sadler’s Wells where it opened this year. Red Velvet (Tricycle/St Ann’s Warehouse New York/West End) for which Lolita won the Charles Wintour Evening Standard Award and the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright and the AWA Award for Arts and Culture in 2013. Forthcoming writing includes A Working Diary co-written with Adrian Lester published later this year and her new play Calmer, due to open at Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
