Lord of the Rings star Morfydd Clark and Under the Banner of Heaven’s Billy Howle will star in new versions of John Osborn’s Look Back In Anger and Arnold Wesker’s Roots, which will run in rep at London’s Almeida in what has been dubbed the Angry and Young season. Ahead of the season, Romola Garai will appear in Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s exceptional Noble Prize-winning novel The Years.
Roots, with Clark in the central role of Beatie Bryant who returns to her family in Norfolk after living a highly charged political life in London, will run at the Almeida in Islington, North London, from September 10 through November 23, directed by Diyan Zora.
Howle will take a small part in Roots but in Look Back In Anger, which will run from September 20 through November 23, he’ll play Jimmy Porter, the theater’s original angry young man.
When the play – the first so-called ‘kitchen sink drama’ – opened at the Royal Court in London in 1956, it heralded a new era of contemporary British theater and for a while replaced the staid, safe drawing room comedy.
Wesker wrote Roots in response to Osborn’s scorching commentary on the political and social upheavals that upended post-war Britain.
Further casting in Look Back In Anger, which is directed by Atri Banerjee, will see Ellora Torchia (The Gold) play Alison, Jimmy’s wife, with Clark and Iwan Davies as their friends Helena and Cliff.
Clark described Helena as the “disruptor” to “this already very disturbed relationship” between Jimmy and Alison.
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