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 December 13, 2005
Rufus will begin work on Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll" in
April, 2006. The new play will be directed by Trevor Nunn at the Royal Court Theatre
in London.
ROYAL COURT 50TH ANNIVERSARY PRODUCTIONS NOW ON SALE.
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Rebellion at the Royal Court over Stoppard play.
The Evening Standard (London, England)
12/22/2005
Byline: TOM TEODORCZUK
THE 50th anniversary celebrations at the Royal Court theatre have been thrown into
disarray by a row over the inclusion of a new play by Sir Tom Stoppard.
Two productions have been withdrawn from the season beginning next month, one at least in
protest at the inclusion of the playwright who has no connection with the Sloane Square
venue.
Sir Tom's new work Rock 'N' Roll, depicting life in communist Czechoslovakia between the
1968 Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution in 1989, will be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn
at the Royal Court in June. It is his first original play since The Coast Of
Utopia in 2002 and stars Rufus Sewell.
But William Gaskill, artistic director of the Royal Court during its heyday in the
Sixties, has pulled out of directing Sirens, a 50th anniversary production based on a
chapter from James Joyce's Ulysses, saying the Royal Court should not host Sir Tom and Sir
Trevor.
Gaskill told the Evening Standard: "I have nothing against them but should a Tom
Stoppard play directed by Trevor Nunn really be on at the Royal Court?
"That does not fit with the Royal Court's identity. It is more suitable for the Royal
Shakespeare Company or the National.
"Stoppard and Nunn have no connection with the Royal Court but they obviously feel
they have a right to do a play there. I think much of what [artistic director] Ian Rickson
has done has been good and I wish the theatre well but the Royal Court should steer a
different course away from the big battleships."
The second production to be withdrawn is Cloud Nine, a 1979 play by Caryl Churchill, which
she had agreed could be revived to mark the Royal Court's half century.
There have been suggestions that Churchill, who has
written 17 plays for the venue, changed her mind in protest at Stoppard's inclusion in the
anniversary season but a spokesman for the Royal Court denied this was the reason.
He said: "Caryl is in the middle of writing a new play and felt that a revival of
Cloud Nine would get in the way of her ability to focus on the work she is currently
writing so, regretfully, she withdrew the rights for the play.
"We were disappointed but we understand. We have a good relationship with her."
Asked why the famously reclusive Churchill had pulled the plug, her agent said:
"There were various reasons and certainly Caryl did want to give herself some
possible writing time. She really has no further comment."
Unlike Sir Tom, Churchill and Gaskill are both radical Left-wingers, prompting speculation
that this was the reason for the withdrawals.
However, Gaskill and the Royal Court both denied this was the case.
Churchill's Cloud Nine was to have been directed by the theatre's outgoing artistic
director Rickson. In its place the Royal Court will stage the premiere of acclaimed
director Jez Butterworth's play The Winterling.
A four-day performance of Churchill's 1982 play Top Girls will still take place. The Royal
Court spokesman said the playwright was keen to support the efforts of acting students.
THEATRICAL HOME FOR THE ANGRY
THE ROYAL COURT is Britain's first national theatre and certainly its most progressive.
Beginning with John Osborne's groundbreaking drama Look Back In Anger in 1956, the Sloane
Square venue has specialised in edgy, dynamic plays by young writers during its half
century. Artistic directors have established the Royal Court's position as a necessary
destination for anyone interested in avant-garde theatre. The first, George Devine,
frequently did battle with the Lord Chamberlain's office, the London stage censors during
the Sixties, leading to the abolition of the office in 1968. In the Nineties Stephen
Daldry, who is now directing West End musical sensation Billy Elliot, frequently
criticised the Conservative government for what he saw as a lack of support for the arts.
Given its colourful history it would somehow seem inappropriate if there was no offstage
drama during its 50th anniversary season.
OUTSIDER COMES IN FROM THE RIGHT
BORN in Czechoslovakia in 1937, Sir Tom Stoppard is one of Britain's leading playwrights.
His plays include Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers and Arcadia. He is also a
successful Hollywood screenwriter, winning an Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare In Love. But
Sir Tom has never been a fully paid-up member of London's Leftwing arts establishment.
Though he has been careful not to publicly back the Tory party, he has spoken favourably
about Margaret Thatcher and in 2001 attacked modern art.
His scepticism for the liberal intelligentsia has also been reflected in some of his
plays. But he has spoken of his delight at Rock 'N' Roll being put on at the Royal Court.
"I want to be part of the Royal Court's history before I pack it in," he said.
"I don't want to fall under a bus before having a play on its stage."
Wags joke that the bus would be driven by someone at the Royal Court.
SEWELL TO STAR IN NEW STOPPARD PLAY
contactmusic.com
December 12, 2005
British actor RUFUS SEWELL is to take the
lead role in Oscar-winning writer TOM STOPPARD's new play ROCK AND ROLL.
The 38-year-old LEGEND OF ZORRO actor will star as a young man caught between political
and cultural upheavals in Czechoslovakia and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s - a storyline
which is considered the Czech-born playwright's most autobiographical work to date.
Directed by TREVOR NUNN, the play is set toat London's Royal Court next June (06),
and is predicted to transfer immediately to a West End Theatre.
Thanks, Rai!
London Theatre Guide
Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
Box Office:
Genre: Play
Tom Stoppard's first play for the Royal Court takes a look at Czechoslovakia's recent
history - spanning the period between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution - from
two different perspectives. In Prague, a rock 'n' roll band symbolises the resistance to
the regime, while in England a Communist philosopher at Cambridge represents the British
left.
Stoppard's many plays include the Olivier Award-winning Arcadia, Rosencratz And
Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing and The Coast Of Utopia.
Rock 'n' Roll is directed by Trevor Nunn, who is also making his Royal Court debut. Dubbed
'the people's director', Nunn's recent credits include Richard II and Hamlet, both at the
Old Vic, while other West End shows that have benefited from Nunn's guidance include
Anything Goes, Les Misérables and The Woman In White.
Author: Tom Stoppard; Director: Trevor Nunn; Producer: The Royal Court;
Previews from: 3 June 2006
ng night: 14 June 2006
Closing: 15 July 2006
Times: Mon-Sat 19:30 (14 Jun 19:00), Mats Sat (except 3 Jun) 15:30
Prices: £7.50-£25
Theatre information:
Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
Address: Sloane Square, London, SW1W 8AS
Thanks for the link, Uke!
Variety.com
V legit
October 16, 2005
Court convenes 50th
Royal playhouse marks its half-century looking back to Osborne's 'Anger'
By MATT WOLF
LONDON -- As the Royal Court prepares to mark its half-century next year, the playhouse
that gave us John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" in 1956 is anticipating a
lineup of work in the same tradition of adventurous, socially engaged drama with,
occasionally, the power to scorch.
Will any of the new season's productions be instant classics along the lines of the
Osborne landmark? Who's to tell, especially since some of the plays (a new David HareDavid
Hare script, for instance) aren't even written yet. But the plan is for a furiously busy
Court season, with more than 20 productions and 50 readings -- one for every year in the
Court's history.
The coup for 2006 -- a season whose £1 million ($1.75 million) budget is
some 2½ times the theater's annual standard -- is the first contribution from Tom
Stoppard, with his latest play, "Rock 'n' Roll," which a six-week
run in early June. Trevor Nunn and Bunny Christie are the director/designer team.
"My job is to find big defining plays, and I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't
pester people like Tom, which I did gently but sustainedly," says Court artistic
director Ian Rickson. "Rock 'n' Roll," with speaking roles for up to 20 actors,
is said to shift in time from 1968 to the present. Music from the period helps chart an
intricate narrative that moves over the years between Czechoslovakia -- the country of
Stoppard's birth -- and England.
Not all Court newcomers are as established as Stoppard, but they form part of the
theater's typically varied, eclectic mix. Tanika Gupta, the 42-year-old Asian writer (her
parents are from Calcutta), told Variety she could have only preemed her latest show,
"Sugar Mummies," at the Court.
"Mummies" is a nine-person play focusing on the sex industry in the Caribbean,
and the women -- a diverse quartet in Gupta's play -- who travel to Jamaica in search of
carnal adventure and maybe even love.
. "With 'Sugar Mummies,' I was very much writing a play for the Court rather than a
play you fancy writing and then tout around," Gupta says.
Sexually explicit, per Gupta, and hopefully honest, the play, due to start a monthlong run
next July, is intended for a public that doesn't mind something different. "You don't
have to worry about the audience being prissy," she says.
And how could they, given Court dramatists have written of the stoning of a baby (Edward
Bond's "Saved""Saved"), mutilation and torture (Sarah Kane's
"Blasted") and, most recently, compulsive gay cruising on the Net (Tim
Fountain's "Sex Addict"). The Court can embrace calmer terrain, too -- think of
Court regular Conor McPherson, for starters -- but even there the emphasis is on a
distinctive voice. And a bit of daring.Occasionally, the title provides a clue. In April,
Simon Stephens, a veteran of the Court's tiny Theater Upstairs, makes his mainstage debut
with a new play, "Motortown," which originally went by the title, "Fuck
Off." Play, about a young British soldier returning home from Iraq to east London's
Essex, directly acknowledges the tradition of which it is a part.
"I've written a play, I think, that's pretty angry: the least personal, most
political play I've ever written," says Stephens. "And I couldn't have done it
without the support of this theater."
Not every Court play exists to vent its spleen, any more than Osborne's kitchen-sink
realism has been an unshakable Court template. (On the other hand, one can trace a direct
connection between Osborne and such Court inheritors as Edward Bond, Howard Barker, and
even Caryl Churchill, who in varying ways are themselves fueled by rage.)
What matters, says former Court a.d.a.d. Stephen DaldryStephen Daldry, is that the
playhouse allows "an extraordinary cacophony of different sights and sounds and
voices." Daldry is keeping his fall calendar clear to direct Hare's new play and has
shepherded three of Churchill's more audacious works -- "This Is a Chair,"
"Far Away" and "A Number" -- to Court preems.
In the absence of a new play from Churchill, at least for now, the writer described by
Rickson as Britain's "most adventurous" will be repped by a February revival of
"Top Girls"; Rickson himself directs the six-week run of a seminal work from the
Court's most prolific dramatist. But the programming allows established writers to rub up
against new ones, less-seasoned scribes to follow pros.
To that end, Gupta's "Sugar Mummies" will fall between new plays from
Stoppardand Terry Johnson ("Piano/Forte"), a Court regular. Johnson's latest
stars Kelly Reilly and American thesp Alicia WittAlicia Witt as sisters. Daringly for
Johnson, it's not about anyone famous.
"Our task," says Rickson, who is entering his final year as Court a.d., "is
to commemorate and celebrate while being true to ourselves.""Look Back in
Anger" gets a special reading, starring David Tennant and Kelly Reilly, on May 8,
while 2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter will star later in the season in onetime Court
writer Samuel Beckett's solo play, "Krapp's Last Tape."
But the desire is for a year that also looks ahead. Or as Rickson puts it, "How do we
keep the story moving forward?"
JERWOOD THEATRE DOWNSTAIRS
RoyalCourtTheatre.com
ROCK 'N' ROLL
Written by Tom Stoppard
3 June - 15 July
Direction: Trevor Nunn
Tom Stoppard provocative new play is his first for the Royal Court. ROCK 'N' ROLL spans
the recent history of Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution -
but from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock 'n' roll band came to symbolise
resistance to the regime, and the British left, represented by a Communist philosopher at
Cambridge.
Recent work by Tom Stoppard includes THE COAST OF UTOPIA, THE INVENTION OF LOVE, ARCADIA,
HAPGOOD (Aldwych Theatre), THE REAL THING (Strand Theatre), NIGHT AND DAY, TRAVESTIES
(RSC), JUMPERS (National Theatre), AFTER MAGRITTE and THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND. The first
of his plays to be staged was ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD.
"I have never left a new play more convinced that I just witnessed a
masterpiece." Daily Telegraph [ARCADIA]
With support from NoraLee and Jon Sedmak
Pinter joins stage celebrations
BBC News
news.bbc.co.uk
October 11, 2005
Acclaimed playwrights Sir Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter are to help the English Stage
Company celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Sir Tom is writing Rock 'n' Roll,
his first play for the company, which is based at London's Royal Court Theatre. Pinter
will act in Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, while an exhibition of actors' portraits
will also mark the anniversary. Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry will direct a play
for the company.
The company is credited with changing British theatre. Its conflict with authorities over
the content of many of its early plays helped abolish theatre censorship in 1968.
Sir Tom's play will be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn and will span the history of
Czechoslovakia from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution. Royal Court artistic
director Ian Rickson said: "It takes the history of the left, the censors, rock music
and identity. It is incredibly fitting that we have a play like that, which is so
ambitious, in our 50th anniversary year."
Sir Tom, who wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, said: "I want to be part of
the Royal Court's history before I pack it in. I don't want to fall under a bus before
having a play on its stage."
Pinter, Stoppard back Royal Court Theatre
boston.com
October 11, 2005
LONDON --Two of Britain's greatest living playwrights, Tom Stoppard and
Harold Pinter, will help the Royal Court Theatre celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.
Pinter, 75, author of silence-filled plays such as "The Caretaker" and "The
Birthday Party" will appear onstage, starring in a production of Samuel Beckett's
terse "Krapp's Last Tape," the Royal Court announced Tuesday.
Stoppard, whose teasing, metaphysical dramas include "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead" and "Jumpers," will write a new play for the company. Due to
next June, "Rock 'n' Roll" will chart the recent history of
Czechoslovakia, from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
"This play is so fitting for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Court. It takes the
history of the Left, the censors, rock music and identity," said artistic director
Ian Rickson. "It is incredibly fitting that we have a play like that, which is so
ambitious, in our 50th anniversary year."
The theater in London's Sloane Square was built in 1888. It reputation as one of Britain's
leading venues for new work dates to 1956, when the English Stage Company took up
residence and began presenting plays by convention-defying writers including John Osborne,
Arnold Wesker and Edward Bond.
"I want to be part of the Royal Court's history before I pack it in," said
Stoppard, 68, who was born in Czechoslovakia. "Some of my best nights of the last 40
years have been spent in the Royal Court's auditorium. I don't want to fall under a bus
before having a play on its stage."
Other highlights of the anniversary season include Tanika Gupta's "Sugar
Mummies," a look at Caribbean sex tourism; a revival of Caryl Churchill's "Cloud
Nine"; and a production of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull." "Billy
Elliot" director Stephen Daldry will direct a yet-to-be-announced play next fall.
Backstage Whispers overheard by Richard Andrews
TheatreNet.com
14 October, 2005
Last updated : 14th October 2005
The Royal Court Theatre has announced the plays and events that will make up its 50th
anniversary season. Though celebrating past triumphs, it concentrates on new writing,
with, as previously forecast here, Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, set in Czechoslovakia and
Britain, moving between 1956, 1968 and the present day, directed by Trevor Nunn; Terry
Johnson's Piano/Forte, starring Kelly Reilly and Alicia Witt; Stella Feehily's O Go My
Man, looking at relationships in a hectic world of personal and professional commitments,
directed by Max Stafford-Clark; Simon Stephens's Motortown, following a soldier returning
from Iraq; Tanika Gupta's Sugar Mummies, exploring Jamaican sex tourism, directed by Indhu
Rubasingham; and an unnamed play by David Hare, directed by Stephen Daldry. The Theatre
Upstairs will host rehearsed readings tracing the journey of the Royal Court from John
Osborne's The Entertainer to Roy Williams's Fallout, with, where possible, the original
casts. Further celebrations will include a special event to mark the People's Choice,
which named The Rocky Horror Show as the theatregoers' favourite Royal Court production
(no doubt much to the chagrin of the theatre management). Further information can be found
on the RC web site via the link from London Venues in the Links section of TheatreNet.
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