Wilton and West to Star in Donmar's Family Reunion
By Mark Shenton
18 Jul 2008
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Samuel West
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Penelope Wilton and Samuel West will star in The Family Reunion, the centerpiece production of a landmark T. S. Eliot festival being staged at the Donmar Warehouse this autumn that will offer audiences the opportunity to engage with one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.
The Family Reunion, as previously reported, will open on Nov. 25 (following previews from Nov. 20), for a run to Jan. 10, 2009, under the direction of Jeremy Herrin.
Both Wilton and West have previously worked extensively at the Donmar: Wilton is in the current hit production of The Chalk Garden (running to Aug. 2), and has previously appeared there in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, Lilian Hellman's The Little Foxes and Pinter's A Kind of Alaska, while West was seen Pinter's Betrayal there in 2007.
In Family Reunion West will play Harry, who returns to the ancestral home to celebrate his mother's birthday. Tormented by a dark secret, he confides in Aunt Agatha (Wilton), only to discover that the family too have its own hidden demons. The Family Reunion is described in press materials as a "poetic and powerful tale of sin and redemption" that "reveals a family haunted by the ghosts of their past."
Wilton's other recent theatre credits include Women Beware Women (RSC), The House of Bernarda Alba (National Theatre) and Afterplay (The Gate, Dublin; Charleston, USA and West End). For television, her work includes "Half Broken Things," "Dr Who," "Bob and Rose," "Victoria and Albert" and "Wives and Daughters"; and for film, "The History Boys," "Match Point," "Pride and Prejudice," "Calendar Girls" and "Iris."
West's other theatre credits include Caryl Churchill's A Number and Much Ado About Nothing (Sheffield Theatres), The Exonerated (Riverside Studios), Doctor Faustus (Minerva Theatre), and Hamlet and Richard II (RSC). His television work includes "The Long Walk to Finchley," "Cambridge Spies," "Longitude," "Edward VII" and "Persuasion"; and for film, "Van Helsing," "Iris," "Pandemonium," "Complicity," "Notting Hill," "Frankie and Johnny," "Howard's End" and "Carrington." He was the artistic director of Sheffield Theatres from 2004 to 2007. His other directing work includes the critically acclaimed revival of Dealer's Choice (Menier Chocolate Factory and Trafalgar Studios) and the forthcoming Waste at the Almeida Theatre.
The T. S. Eliot Festival will also include Katie Mitchell directing Stephen Dillane reading Four Quartets; rehearsed readings of Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party directed, respectively, by the Donmar's two associate directors, Douglas Hodge and Jamie Lloyd; and two evenings of readings of Eliot's verse produced and directed by Josephine Hart.
For tickets contact the box office at 0870 060 6624 or visit www.donmarwarehouse.com.
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